Daisies In The Wind (27 page)

When she heard hoofbeats, she went to the
window and saw Wolf Bodine riding toward his own property, and
Chance Navarro headed back in the direction of town. Her gaze
followed Wolf, and she swallowed back the urge to race, shouting,
after him. But as she watched, Navarro reined in his horse and
turned around. To her astonishment he galloped right back the way
he had come, halting the bay in her front yard.

“What is it?” she demanded, coming out onto
the porch again, staring at him in bewilderment.

“I don’t give up that easily.” He dismounted
with a soft thud, his boots scattering dust as he walked toward
her. “Bodine never would have left us alone if he’d thought I was
staying, so I let him believe I was leaving.” He came up the steps
of the porch and seized her hands. “Rebeccah, are you sure you’re
all right? I was worried about you last night.”

“I’m fine.” She spoke quickly, hoping he
wouldn’t notice how distracted she was. “I’m horribly embarrassed
that I got drunk on two glasses of huckleberry wine, but other than
that I’m fine.”

He was very handsome. It was his dancing
green eyes and his earnest grin that made him so disarmingly
appealing, she decided. That and the smooth, wiry way he moved, the
quick flash of intelligence in his eyes.
That’s right, think
about him. Don’t think about Wolf
. “I’ve never before made a
fool of myself like that, Mr. Navarro, so please don’t fancy I make
a habit of it.”

“I’d never think such a thing. Besides, you
didn’t make a fool of yourself at all. You were downright
adorable.” That quick, lightning grin again that seemed to flash a
hole clear through her. “I wanted to make sure the sheriff didn’t
take advantage of you. He insisted on bringing you home, despite
the fact that Mr. Pritchard offered and so did I.”

“He did? I mean,
you
did? How
kind.”

“I’m not kind at all,” he told her softly. He
reached out a strong, slender white hand to cup her face very
gently, as if her chin was made of spun glass. “I did it for
selfish reasons.”

For a moment Rebeccah found herself lost in
those provocative moss-green eyes. Then she coolly removed his hand
and stepped back a pace. “You’re being rather forward, Mr.
Navarro,” she said steadily, but she couldn’t help smiling at
him.

“That’s a fault of mine,” he admitted. “When
I see a beautiful woman, a woman of great charm and intelligence, I
just have to let her know that I’m loco about her.”

“When I hear a man say flattering things like
that, I just can’t help but wonder exactly what he’s after,” she
returned sweetly.

Chance laughed. “Well, for one thing, I’d
like you to call me Chance. Most everybody does. For another I’d
like to get to know you better. And if you have doubts about my
reputation, Rebeccah, you’re a smart gal. And you’re on the right
track. I’m no good. Let me say that straight off. I like to move
around, I hate ordinary chores and timetables and talking about the
weather. I like riding fast and hard, staying up all night
gambling, dancing with a pretty girl, doing something different and
meeting someone new every day. I also have a past. Right now I’m a
gambler. But I’ve been a lot of things—a cowboy, trail guide,
prospector. Never any one thing for long. The good part is I found
out along the way that my luck didn’t revolve around discovering
gold but in winning it. Every time I take a chance in a poker game
or at a roulette wheel”—he shrugged, the smile still playing around
the corners of his mouth—“well, let’s just say fortune smiles on me
again and again. My lucky chances pay off. That’s why I picked my
name.” He suddenly swept his hat off his head and crushed it to his
chest. “I never stay too long in any one town—it’s in my nature to
drift, I reckon, but I’ve been in Powder Creek for weeks now, ever
since I heard about you at that town meeting. You had the whole
town in an uproar. It made me curious to meet you. I had a hunch
you were someone I should meet, someone different from everyone
else, not just an
ordinary
woman. And Rebeccah,” he added,
chuckling, “you should know that my hunches nearly always pay
off.”

The magpie chattered from the tree again. The
autumn sun dappled shadows across the yard and glinted upon Chance
Navarro’s neat black hair.

“I don’t know if it’s luck or fate or chance
or what that brought me to Powder Creek in the first place,” he
finished, “but I’ve been enjoying my stay. And I think I’d enjoy it
a lot more if you’d have supper with me in town tomorrow
night.”

Rebeccah could only stare at him, overwhelmed
by his lengthy speech. She knew she shouldn’t trust him—the things
he had told her hardly revealed a steady character—and yet there
was something so disarmingly open about him, so delightfully breezy
and unpredictable, that she found herself liking him despite it
all. And above all, it was easy to be with him. Her feelings for
Chance Navarro were so much less complicated than those for
Wolf.

“All right—under one condition,” she said.
“Over supper you must tell me everything that happened at the
schoolhouse last night—from the moment l began to dance with
Sheriff Bodine until I left with him later. All that I said, all
that I did, as far as you know. Deal?”

“Deal.” Chance squeezed her hands and
chuckled. He backed down the steps. “You worry too much, honey. I
can tell you’re wondering what people thought when you had a bit
too much to drink. Well, why should you care a hoot about that? A
woman as lovely and full of life as you are should be able to do
anything she pleases and to hell with anyone who doesn’t like
it.”

He made it sound so easy, Rebeccah reflected
wryly, watching him ride off with a wave and a grin. She waited
until his dark-clad figure had disappeared across the golden-gray
buffalo grass, which rose like a sea for miles around, before
returning to the kitchen to scrape and wash the breakfast plates.
For some reason she was drawn to Chance Navarro.

He reminds me of Bear
. In some
strange way the same philosophy expressed by Chance had guided her
father as well. He, too, had never stayed in one place for long,
had never thought rules or chores or ordinary, everyday living
applied to him. Something in her responded to this free-spirited
philosophy. Of course she didn’t think it applied to committing
crimes, to stealing other people’s gold or money, but why
should
she be so worried about what anyone thought here in
Powder Creek?

Especially Wolf Bodine. He meant nothing to
her. Didn’t he?

Yet he had brought her home from the dance,
watched over her through the night, chopped her wood, and promised
to protect her from Neely Stoner and the others. And something
else.

He had very nearly made love to her out in
the yard a short time ago.

Rebeccah paused, his plate in her hand. The
strangest part of it all was that she had wanted him to make love
to her.

She hadn’t been afraid. She hadn’t wanted to
stop. The icy panic and nausea had not risen up to blot out all of
the pleasure that she was feeling.

Even in her girlhood dreams Rebeccah had
never wanted Wolf to undress her or touch the intimate parts of her
body or do the things with her that a man and woman in love
normally did. She’d dreamed of him kissing her, yes. Of him telling
her she was beautiful and that he loved her, yes. But somehow or
other the dreams had always faded to a blurry end before anything
else had happened, anything remotely similar to what Neely Stoner
had done.

But when Wolf had caressed her with those
fierce, knowing hands, when he had reached for her, taken over her
senses with his kisses and commanded her body with his passionate
need, she had known only sweet, hot yearning—not fear, not
revulsion.

The soapy plate slipped from her fingers and
clattered to the floor. Rebeccah bent to gather up the shards, lost
in thought.

If only he loved me
, she thought
miserably, rising and placing the broken pieces of crockery on a
towel.
Then there might be some hope
. ...

She could no longer deny that she loved Wolf.
She loved him with all of her poor, stubborn heart. And she knew
that she loved him as he was now, here, in Powder Creek. It was not
the memories of that decent young lawman in Arizona that haunted
her thoughts and dreams of late, but of Wolf, the tall, rugged
sheriff who’d tried to scare her out of town. She loved this man
who was so difficult to know, who teased her and protected her and
looked out for his mother and his son, who stomped off when she
came to dinner and saved her from waltzing with Waylon Pritchard,
who drove her home when she was drunk and chopped her wood while
she slept and kissed her in the open yard until she was ready to
swoon. ...

Wolf.

Could a man like Wolf Bodine ever love an
outlaw’s daughter? Could his intentions be honorable toward her,
his feelings any deeper than base, physical lust?

How am I to know?
she wondered in
despair as she pressed her eyes closed.
I understand so little
about men when it comes to love, and certainly nothing about Wolf
Bodine. For all I know, he will never love any woman the way he
loved his dead wife.

But she did know some things about him,
Rebeccah realized slowly, her hands dropping to her sides.
I
know that he is decent and good, that he cares for his family and
his town, that he despises dishonesty, and values justice and
law
.

Maybe that is enough
, a voice
whispered inside of her.
Maybe you know enough to understand
him, enough to make him love you in return.

But Rebeccah, feeling weary and confused,
wasn’t at all sure that it was.

“Mountain,” Rebeccah repeated in a clear,
ringing voice. She nodded at Evan Kramer, seated in the third row.
“Try,” she said encouragingly, as a panicked look flitted across
the boy’s face.

“M-o-n-t-a-n,” he mumbled, a scarlet flush
crawling up his neck.

Rebeccah gave him a heartening smile. “Not
quite, but you were close. You did spell almost all of
Montana
. Cara Sue, can you spell
mountain
for
us?”

“M-o-u-n-t-a-i-n,” the pigtailed child
recited proudly.

“Excellent. Now, who can tell me the names of
our two largest rivers here in the Montana Territory? They run
along right here on the map,” she added, tracing the pointer along
two different winding routes. “Does anyone know? Billy?”

“The Missouri River and the Yellowstone,”
Billy Bodine replied in a subdued tone, and Mary Brady, who’d been
waving her hand in the air, nodded agreement.

“Good. All right, class, there are ten more
spelling words to copy down this week, all having to do with
geography. I’ve written them on the blackboard, and I want you all
to write them five times each. You may begin.”

Outside the schoolhouse window the first
snowflakes of the year tumbled down from an ash-gray sky. It was
only the middle of October, yet crunchy frost covered the
landscape, and the air rushed bitter cold through the foothills and
valleys, soaring over the mountain lakes and buffeting the open
plains.

When the school day ended, Rebeccah watched
the children tug on their woolen coats and scarves and mittens with
an odd tightness in her throat. How had they become so dear to her,
these varied faces? Large and small, homely and charming,
quick-witted and dull. She knew them all, cared for them all. How
had it happened in only a few short weeks?

“Good day, Toby. Button your coat, Joey.
Thank you for the apples, Cara Sue,” she called as she stood at the
door and watched them file quickly past her. “Don’t forget, Friday
is the spelling bee!”

As she turned from the door, she saw that, as
usual, Billy Bodine had lingered behind. He was studying the map of
the United States displayed at the front of the classroom, waiting
for her to see the other children off.

“Yes, Billy, what can I do for you?” Rebeccah
asked. She strolled back to her desk and began gathering up her
books and papers.

“I have a question, Miss Rawlings.”

“Go ahead.”

She expected him to ask her something about
the arithmetic assignment or the Yellowstone River or to give him
her opinion of last week’s essay—any one of the typical questions
that he posed to her most days after school, when he really only
wanted a few extra minutes of her time and attention. But instead
he caught her completely off guard.

“Why do people have to die?”

Stunned, she could only stare at him. “What
makes you ask that, Billy?” she asked gently, and wondered if he
was thinking about his mother.

“It’s my gramma.”

“Caitlin? Is something wrong?” Rebeccah’s
stomach clenched when Billy nodded.

“She took sick yesterday—real sick. Doc
Wilson said she might die. Pa doesn’t know I heard, but I did. And
I’m scared.”

A cold chill pierced Rebeccah. She sank
weakly upon her chair. “But she was perfectly fine a few days ago.
She gave me the recipe for vinegar pie and helped me pick out a
pattern for new slipcovers. What happened?”

“The fever came on her all of a sudden.
Joey’s ma brought her soup, but it didn’t help. Mrs. Adams has been
nursing her, and last night I heard her telling Pa that Gramma was
no better. Doc Wilson said the same. Then later ...”

“What, Billy? What has scared you so?”

“Gramma called Pa in and she told him that
she wasn’t going to get well. And she said he’d better start
planning to take himself a wife, because she didn’t want to die
knowing the two of us were going to be left all alone in that big
house.”

Stunned, Rebeccah swallowed back her dismay.
She couldn’t bear the thought of losing Caitlin. Billy’s words
alarmed her considerably, but she spoke as cheerfully as she could.
“Don’t give up hope, Billy. She might get well. We must pray and
hope and take good care of her.”