Flint Hills Bride (2 page)

She spared Jake one last glance and, though his father had joined him, his eyes were on her. She wondered what he was thinking then decided she would just as soon not know.

Christian’s pretty wife, Lynnette, opened the back door and welcomed her inside with a kiss on her cheek. Two little children peeked from behind her skirts as she helped Emily out of her cloak, scarf and gloves.

“Hello, Willa. Hello, Trevor.” Emily crouched down and tried to coax them out. “Do you remember me?”

Trevor grinned and buried his face in a fistful of his mother’s skirt, but Willa stepped forward. “I ’member you. You’re Aunt Emily. Trevor’s just a dumb ol’ baby and doesn’t ‘member nothin’.”

Lynnette pried her skirt free and lifted the boy, positioning him around her protruding belly. Another child was due in three months. “Let’s get inside by the fire,” she said. “You must be freezing.”

Willa took Emily’s hand. “Mama said it was too cold to go outside and meet you, but it wasn’t, was it?”

“It’s pretty cold,” Emily said. “I think I’ll ask Martha for some tea.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Lynnette said. “You go on in and make yourself at home.”

“It’s not too cold for Papa to go outside and meet
you,” Willa observed, dragging Emily into the living room.

“Papa’s doing chores,” Emily said, laughing at Willa’s pout. She was a perfect combination of her parents, with her mother’s fine features and her father’s blond hair. Trevor was the opposite, a dark-haired version of Christian, dimples and all.

“I can do the chores,” the little girl insisted.

“I bet you can,” Emily said, moving to stand before the fire. “Though why you would want to is beyond me.”

“I’m almost five,” Willa said, explaining everything.

Christian and Lynnette hadn’t changed the living room much in the five years they had been married. Her father’s books and artifacts had gone with him to Topeka and had been replaced by some of their own. The room bore traces of little children, but the furniture and its arrangement was essentially as it had always been, making her feel for just a moment as if she had stepped back in time.

Lynnette, with Trevor on her hip, joined them. “Martha will have the tea ready in a few minutes.” She sat down and swung Trevor onto her lap. He grinned shyly at Emily.

Emily was trying to get him to say “Emily” when Jake and Christian brought her trunk through the room and up the stairs. She tried not to watch them. They had shed their coats at the door, and it was disconcerting to realize that Jake was a full-grown man. Though why this troubled her she wasn’t sure.

“I’ll help,” yelled Willa, running to catch up with the men. She pushed her little hands against the trunk.

“Run around in front, biscuit, and get the door,” Christian suggested.

Emily laughed. “She’s his biscuit and I’m his muffin.”

“All his favorite females he nicknames after food.”

Emily grinned at her sister-in-law. “And you are…?”

Lynnette grimaced and adjusted her snug dress. “Right now I’m his dumpling.”

Emily laughed. She hadn’t realized her gaze had gone back to the men working their way up the open stairway until Lynnette spoke again.

“Jake’s taking two weeks off to visit his parents. He tries to visit often, but he doesn’t usually stay long. They’ve really looked forward to this.”

Emily nodded. She hoped that meant his parents would keep him so busy she wouldn’t see much of him.

Emily made a face at Trevor, trying to coax another smile out of him. She didn’t want to talk about Jake. But she didn’t want to talk about herself, either. She wondered what her parents had said about her and Anson in the letter that preceded her. She would probably find out soon enough.

Trevor mimicked Emily’s wrinkled nose and scrunched lips, making Emily laugh. Willa’s high-pitched giggle and the sound of footsteps on the stairs caught her attention. Christian, with Willa on his shoulders, turned in their direction at the bottom of the stairs. Jake, without a glance at her, went the other way toward the kitchen.

“We’re glad to have you here, muffin,” Christian
said, joining them. He set Willa on the floor, then kissed Emily’s cheek. “I’ll finish the chores then we can talk.”

As Christian left the room, Emily sighed and slumped into a chair. “Another lecture?” she asked her sister-in-law.

“From Christian? I doubt it,” Lynnette replied. “But you know your brother. He feels responsible for everyone, and he’s very worried about you. He wants to hear your side.”

“Where have I heard that before?” she muttered.

“Emily, I’m the first one to say a woman should be allowed to make up her own mind, but you’re young and the things we hear about this young man are not good. We want to be sure it’s you making the decisions, not this young man.”

Martha, with a tray of tea and teacups, saved her from having to make a response. Willa declared it a tea party and kept the women busy moving tables and chairs to accommodate the younger guests. By the time the tea was gone Emily could honestly claim fatigue and retire to her room.

She sat down on the bed, her mind in too much turmoil to try to rest. She eyed the trunk that she knew she should unpack, but even thinking about it seemed to take too much energy. She let her eyes roam the room. The holidays she had spent here the past few years seemed to blend together in her memory, but the summers when she was a child were as distinct as separate photographs.

She sat and recalled when the quilt, the picture on the wall, the little writing desk had each been bought and added to the room. Her eyes fell on a doll
propped beside a row of books on the shelf above the desk. She had been six when her father had bought it. She had taken it back and forth between the ranch and Topeka for several years. Then when she was twelve, she had left it here.

She lifted the doll from the shelf, unconscious of having moved toward it. She smoothed aside the mangled hair and smiled down at the painted face. This had been her baby. In a display of vanity she had named it Emily.

She felt tears forming in her eyes and tried to blink them away. It was too early to know, too early yet to worry. And besides, Anson loved her. It would all work out. They would convince their families somehow and be married before the baby came.

She put the doll back on the shelf, determined not to think about it, and resolutely turned her attention to her trunk. She was nearly unpacked when she heard a knock on the door.

“Can I come in, muffin?”

She slid the drawer closed as she answered, turned and waited for her brother to enter. He closed the door behind him and opened his arms to her.

She ran to him, accepting his offer of comfort. He stroked her hair and rocked her gently. “I’ve been worried since I got Pa’s letter.” She heard the rumble of his voice in his chest under her ear. “I guess I wish you’d stay a little girl forever.”

She drew away so she could see his face. “I can’t,” she stated. “I’m grown, and I’m in love. Why make things hard for me?”

“The man’s in jail.” He cut off her protest with a
finger on her lips. “We don’t want to see anyone break your heart.”

“Let me go back to him.”

He shook his head. “It’s hard for me to deny you anything, but our parents have forbidden you to contact him, and I have to say I agree with them.”

She pulled out of his arms and crossed the room, moving aside the curtain that hung in front of the glass balcony door and looked down on the brown valley below.

“Emily, they’ll be here in two weeks. We can talk it all out then. If you still feel the same, I’ll take your side.”

“I don’t want to wait,” she said.

“If it’s love, it’ll survive two weeks.”

She swung around to face him. “But he needs me now!”

Christian seemed only saddened by her outburst. “I’m sorry, Emily,” he said.

She scowled at him as he left her room. Two weeks wouldn’t make any difference to her parents. Christian’s arguments probably wouldn’t, either. Even her pregnancy—if there was a pregnancy—might not make them see reason. One of her friends from school had confided in her parents and had been sent to a maternity sanitarium. She had come home after the baby was born—a baby she was never even given a chance to see.

No, she couldn’t count on her parents. Or Christian. If she was going to be with Anson, she would have to do something herself.

Emily had hoped to spend the rest of the afternoon alone, but only minutes after Christian left, there was
another knock followed by a loud whisper. “Are you sleeping?”

Emily opened the door and Willa flounced in. “Mama put Trevor down for a nap, and now she’s writing.”

Emily smiled at the girl’s sour face. Lynnette wrote love stories under the name Silver Nightingale. It had created quite a sensation when the family had first heard about it, though they were used to it now.

“I know!” Willa declared, trying to snap her fingers. “I’ll go make cookies.”

“You will?” Emily was always surprised at the girl’s self-confidence. “Have you made them by yourself before?”

“No, but I can. I’ll show you how, if you want.”

Emily laughed and took the child’s hand. While they went down the stairs, one step at a time, Willa related all the times she had helped make cookies, cakes and pies. By the time they rounded the bottom of the stairs and went through the dining room, Emily was almost convinced that the girl could make the treat herself.

She pushed through the kitchen door with a chattering Willa behind her and came face-to-face with Jake. The little girl skipped around her and headed toward Martha at the other end of the room. Emily stood staring at Jake.

After a moment she realized that he was actually several feet away and the plank table separated them. Somehow their eyes had locked in such a way as to minimize the distance. It was disconcerting, and she made an effort to shake it off.

She tore her eyes from his face and only then did she realize what he was doing. On the table were several piles of Martha’s dried flowers and a half-filled vase.

She grinned at him. “Here’s a talent I wasn’t aware of. Is this how you keep yourself busy between chasing desperados?”

He looked down at the flowers as if surprised to find them there. “I’m afraid you’ve caught me,” he said. “I’m arranging flowers without the first idea of what I’m doing.”

She laughed and joined him on his side of the table. “Are these for the dining table?”

He nodded.

“And what are these for?” She slid a pair of scissors out from under a few dry stems.

“Trimming my nails?”

She chewed the inside of her cheek. It wouldn’t do for him to think he had actually made her laugh. She was still mad at him. “Dear little Jake,” she said, looking up into his face a good eight inches above hers. “Flowers on the table can’t be so tall as to block people’s view of one another. These must be trimmed.”

She lifted the flowers out of the vase and prepared to start over. “You can run along now,” she said, uncertain whether she really wanted him to go or not.

“Oh, no. If I leave this to you, Ma’ll find me another job, and you might not come help.”

Had she imagined his emphasis on
you?
She was suddenly warm. Did he really have to stand so close? She was starting to feel slightly light-headed. It was the faint scent of the flowers, surely. She trimmed two
of the brittle stems to the appropriate length and handed him the scissors, forcing him with her elbow to move a step away. “Trim all of those,” she said, indicating a pile of flowers, “the same length as these.”

She watched him take four of the flowers, line their heads up and carefully measure them against one of her trimmed flowers.
Snap.
He handed her the newly trimmed bouquet, giving her a courtly bow.

The pleased look on his face made her want to laugh. He was acting more inept than he actually was. She dropped the flowers into the vase and waited for his next offering. It came quickly. He was having fun now, trying five and six at a time. Soon the vase was full, and she called a halt to his trimming.

He snapped the scissors in the air twice, as if unsatisfied. “Now what?” he asked.

“Now, nothing. We put it on the table.”

“We’re done? That wasn’t so hard.”

Emily lifted the bowl as Martha stopped beside the table. “That’s lovely, children. I think the two of you should make the Christmas wreaths, you work so well together. Why don’t you go set the table while I clean up here?”

Emily nodded and headed for the door. Jake went around her quickly and held it open. “See what you did,” he whispered as she passed. He followed her into the dining room adding, “Now we have to make the wreaths. You should have let me do it wrong, and we’d never be asked again.”

She laughed as she set the vase on the sideboard and bent to find a tablecloth inside. “What kind of attitude is that for a lawman?”

She rose and turned before he answered. She thought for an instant that the gleam in his eye was something other than teasing, but it was gone before she could determine what it was.

“Lawman,” he said. “There’s the key. One wrong move, and I was ready to arrest those flowers.” He took an end of the cloth as she unfolded it and helped her spread it smoothly over the table. “But gussy up a wreath with pine cones and ribbons? I don’t know.”

“Come on, it’ll be fun.” Emily retrieved the vase of flowers and set it in the middle of the table. She realized she was looking forward to working on decorations with Jake. For the past few minutes, while they had made up the bouquet, she had been able to forget her worries.

She looked up to find him watching her again, that strange light back in his eyes. He turned quickly and headed for the sideboard. In a moment he was back with a handful of silverware. He didn’t look at her, and she didn’t speak, afraid of what she would see if she forced him to turn in her direction.

She went to gather the plates and napkins, aware of Jake in a way totally different from a few moments before. She felt almost an attraction. But that was absurd. She was merely missing Anson. Or responding to Jake’s attraction to her.

How could this have happened, this sudden change in perspective? And she knew she wasn’t imagining it.