Sunset Embrace (22 page)

He saw himself. And what he saw scared the hell out of him.

He released her quickly and said in a gravelly voice unfamiliar to them both, "Yeah, you did just fine." He picked up the reins, scooting along the seat to put inches of space between them. "I'll take it the rest of the way."

Lydia couldn't read his thoughts. For one breathless moment she had thought he was going to kiss her again. She felt an emotion like a gigantic flower opening inside her chest. She wanted him to kiss her. She wanted to feel his moustache against her lips again, his mouth opening over hers, his tongue inside her mouth. Her insides curled with delicious pleasure at the thought.

But it hadn't happened and he had been cross and cranky ever since, until this morning when, in front of Mr. Hill, he offered to dress the rabbits so she wouldn't have to.

He drove the team after the noon break, but didn't seem inclined to engage in conversation. Lydia made several brave attempts, but his responses were clipped and obligatory. So, to help pass the hours of the bumpy ride, she opened Winston's book and began to peruse the gilt-edged pages. She managed to decipher the title.

"I-van-hoe," she whispered.

"Ivanhoe." Ross corrected her misplacement of the accented syllable.

She brought her head around. "You can read, Ross?"

He shrugged in the way she knew meant he didn't want to elaborate. And she was right. He didn't want her to know that it had only been since he had met Victoria Gentry that he had known how to read. Victoria had been aghast when she learned of this deficiency in him, and had set about teaching him in the evenings when his work for the day was done.

Once Victoria had taught him to read, he had read everything the Gentry library had to offer, and his education had extended to other subjects. She taught him a smattering of geography and history, how to add a column of figures and how to subtract. If he hadn't loved Victoria for any other reason, he would have loved her for teaching him without mocking his dismal ignorance.

"What does that mean?" Lydia asked him now.

"What?"

"Ivanhoe."

"It's a man's name."

"Oh," she said, running her fingers reverently over the smooth leather. "Is there a lady in the story?"

"Two. Rowena and Rebecca."

"What happens to them?"

Ross looked down at the inquiring face and answered the way Victoria used to answer him. "Read it and find out."

A challenge issued by Ross was one she wouldn't refuse. Winston Hill couldn't have induced her nearly so easily with his gentle coaxing. Lydia's chin lifted proudly. "All right," she said. "If I miss a word or don't understand something, will you help me?" He nodded.

So for the rest of the day, he listened as she stumbled through the first two pages. When they pulled into the circle of wagons for the night, they were both tired, but Lydia was aglow with her accomplishment.

Ma visited with her, feeding Lee his bottle, as Lydia sliced potatoes and set the rabbits to roasting. Bubba came running up, breathlessly interrupting them. "Ross needs some shoeing nails. He said there was a sack of them in the wagon."

"I'll get them," Lydia said.

When she had fetched them, Ma said to her son, "You go help your pa and let Lydia take them nails to her husband."

Bubba was disappointed that he had been reassigned chores. He liked spending as much time with Ross as possible. But he wasn't one to argue with his ma these days, not after she had seen him with Priscilla. "All right," he said dispiritedly, ambling toward the Langston wagon.

"I need to finish feeding Lee so you can get your own family's dinner," Lydia said, objecting softly, when indeed her heart had started beating faster at Ma's suggestion. She and Ross had so few moments alone. He was always the last in the train to retire, sometimes long after she had fallen asleep. More mornings than not he was already up and tending his horses before she awoke to feed Lee and get their breakfast. She was beginning to think he hated being around her, especially in the privacy of the wagon.

"Anabeth's gettin' supper tonight. I'd rather take care of Lee anytime than break my back over that hot campfire. Go on," she urged.

Lydia smoothed her hair and took off her apron. Those vanity-inspired gestures made Ma smile secretly as she watched the young woman crossing the camp in the direction of the overnight corral. The people of the train accepted Lydia now as Mrs. Coleman, and she was politely addressed as such.

Ross was alone at the corral, everyone else having returned to their wagons. When she sighted him he was standing beside one of his mares, brushing her mane and speaking to her softly. Lydia was taken with how handsome he was. His hat was off and the late afternoon sunlight cast iridescent streaks on his black hair. His rugged masculinity harmonized with the forest setting.

Lydia was so absorbed in watching the way his hands' smoothed over the mare's flank that she didn't see the stone in her path. She stumbled, falling to her knees, spilling the nails and scattering them over the rocky ground. Embarrassed and cursing her own clumsiness, she rushed to gather them up. Just as she extended her hands to scoop them toward her, she heard the telltale rattle. She froze. The rattlesnake was coiled against the very rock she had stumbled over.

Lydia's scream tore through the evening air and she flung herself backward. Waiting for the pain of the rattlers strike, she turned her head to take one last look at Ross. At her scream he dropped to the ground, whipping the pistol out of his holster at the same time he rolled over twice. Then, seemingly without even taking aim, he fired the pistol. Lydia screamed again as the snakes head was cleanly severed from its body by the accuracy of Ross's bullet. The body writhed and slithered only a few inches from her shoe before it finally lay still.

Frozen in time, her eyes wide, she stared at Ross. He had fired the pistol with the same second-nature reflexes that compel a rattler to strike at anything that moves. Lydia didn't know which had frightened her more.

Speechless, motionless, awed, she watched as he sleekly lifted himself off the ground and came toward her. She shrank from him as he knelt beside her. Lethal as the snake had been, this man could be just as deadly.

"Lydia, did he get you?" The question could have been ripped from his throat for all the pain it caused him. His features were contorted with the agony of having to know.

Another reversal. He had gone from killer to consoler even as she watched. The trauma was too much for Lydia's frayed nerves. "No, no," she stuttered, beginning to shake all over, uncontrollably and violently.

She reached out for him and crawled her way up his chest until her arms were folded over his shoulders and she was crying into his shirtfront. His arms had long since gone around her, bringing her to her knees, locking her small body against the bulwark of his. He buried his face in the wealth of her hair, murmuring reassurances that everything was all right. He felt the shuddering upheaval in her breasts and pressed her tighter against him, cushioning her residual terror and taking it into himself.

Lydia raised her head, her eyes laden with tears. "Only a few weeks ago I wanted to die. But when I saw that rattlesnake, I didn't want to die and leave Lee. I didn't want to leave . . . you, Ross."

"Lydia," he moaned softly before his mouth came down hard on hers, twisting, grinding, releasing all the pent-up tension he had stored inside him for weeks. Their mouths met with the urgency of the moment, with a fierce need to be reassured that they had survived a near disaster. Their breathing was labored and harsh as his tongue thrust undeterred and deep into her mouth. Her hands, the heels of them braced against his shoulders, opened wide with fingers extended, tensed, held, then gradually began to relax as they closed tightly around his neck.

Low animal sounds emanated from him as his hands scored her slender back. He was insane with the primeval male instinct to claim, to possess, to protect, to mate. His hand curved under her hips, lifting her to his heat which found a harbor in her softness. He rubbed himself against that vulnerable pocket that housed her femininity.

Ross thought the low rumbling sound in his ears was the thundering of his own heartbeat. But Lydia realized it was the thudding of running footsteps and tore her mouth free of his. Members of the train were coming to see what; the pistol's firing had been about. Ma, having shoved Lee into Anabeth's unsuspecting arms with an order to take care of him, was leading the pack that congregated around the couple kneeling together, wrapped around each other.

Everyone stared at the grisly body of the snake, which spoke for itself.

"Goddamn lucky if you ask me."

"Could've been any of us. We were all trampin' 'round here not five minutes ago."

"Lucky it wasn't one of the children."

"Lucky Ross got off that shot."

"How'd you do it, Ross?"

"How'd you get off a clean shot like that?"

Lydia looked into the green eyes. They were shimmering with a silent, urgent plea. She read it. He was begging her not to tell them about his precision with the pistol. At that moment she had new insight into the character of her husband, something she had sensed before, but had had no real evidence of. He had something to hide too. Handling horses wasn't his only talent, but he didn't want anyone to know it.

"I ... uh ... I hadn't taken off my gunbelt since my hunting trip this morning. The pistol was still loaded. When Lydia saw the snake and called me over, I was able to get right on top of him." He didn't look at his rapt audience, but kept searching Lydia's eyes, beseeching her not to tell them he was lying, that he had taken the snake's head off from a good forty feet away.

"Well, it's all over now, and speakin' for myself, I've had enough adventure for today," Ma said, coming to their rescue. She didn't know what, but she sensed something important happening between the two of them. She recognized lying, too, when she saw it, and Mr. Coleman had lied. "Mr. Sims, you got any of that brandy left? I'll bet a good swig of it would calm Mrs. Coleman while her husbands gentlin' those spooked horses. Some of you stay with him and comb the area for other snakes."

Reluctantly Ross pulled his arms away from Lydia.

Reluctantly she let herself be turned over to Ma and led back to camp.

L
ydia awoke the next morning with a nervous stomach and fluttery heart. She longed to see Ross and yet she dreaded it too. For some absurd reason she had pretended to be asleep when he returned late to the wagon the evening before. She couldn't quite gather up enough courage to face him then. She didn't know if she could now.

What had happened yesterday after the incident with the rattlesnake? She had never felt such heart-stopping, roiling emotions before. Like tiny hatching eggs, secret sensations had opened up inside her. Timed perfectly to respond to Ross's touch, his kiss, they had cracked, opened, released a new and wonderful emollient that had flowed through her body slowly like warm, golden honey. She had wanted that kiss to go on forever until . . .

What? What did that kind of embrace culminate in? Certainly not what she had experienced with Clancey. They were two different things entirely. The distinction wasn't clear to her yet. She only knew that being with Ross would be nothing like what she had endured before.

Recollections of those detestable times with Clancey were more painful now than ever. Even though her nemesis was dead, the emotional wounds he had inflicted lived after him in her heart. Ross had kissed her yesterday. Only then had she realized the full extent of Clanceys abuse. Should she and Ross ever do ... that . . . she wished to be new for him. She wanted him to be the first to have knowledge of her body. She yearned to offer him purity. It was a gift no longer hers to give.

Regret over that ate at her until she actually felt pain. If it plagued her that much, what must Ross feel about her having had a man before?

Those thoughts were with her as she smoothed down her hair, inspecting her reflection in the scrap of mirror and sadly wanting to be more conventionally pretty. Just then the canvas was flung back and Ross stepped inside the wagon. Startled, she jumped back from him. He loomed large and close, consuming all the available air.

"Good morning," she said breathlessly. She found it easier to speak to his shirt buttons than to his eyes. "Did I oversleep?"

"No. I was up early." When she hazarded a glance up at him, she noted that he wasn't meeting her eyes either. "Did you sleep all right? No aftereffects? From the . . . uh . . . the snake?"

"No," she said, wetting her lips. "I'm fine."

"Ah, good." He turned to leave. "Well—"

"Ross?" She took a step toward him.

"What?" He spun around on the heels of his boots, nearly colliding with her.

"Thank you." This time she dared to raise her face to, his.

"For what?" From some internal fire, his eyes shone brightly and warmed her whole body.

"For saving me from the snake." The words were only a tripping rush of air past lips suddenly gone wooden.

"Oh."

How long they stood there staring at each other, they never remembered. And what would have happened had Luke Langston not stuck his head inside calling, "Anybody home? I got the young'uns milk," they could only guess.

It was like that all day. They spoke in clipped sentences as if afraid to say too much. But they spoke often in fear of not saying enough. They watched each other covertly, but found it difficult to meet each others eyes. They were overly polite. They were both strangely happy. They were both abysmally miserable. They walked a tightrope. That kind of tenuous balance couldn't last long. At one point one must fall to one side or the other.

As usual, after they camped that evening, Ross went to the far side of the wagon to wash up while Lydia prepared their evening meal. She had come to appreciate the sight of him stripped to the waist as he soaped and rinsed, and had begun inventing excuses for stepping around the wagon to speak to him while he was about it.