Stetsons, Spring and Wedding Rings

“Being cast off by someone you care about hurts.”

“You sound like you know something about that.”

“Yes. Of course. There have never been any men falling at my feet. Only one, and he was not falling, believe me.” The big bay stallion shook his head, as if he did not approve of the switch of drivers.

“Don’t worry about Don Quixote. He’s a gentleman, too. You want to tell me what happened?”

“No, but I have a feeling you will pester me until you have the truth.” Dimples framed her mouth, a hint of the smile she held back. She nodded toward the horse. “I can feel him through the lines.”

“Yep. See how I keep the reins light, but not too light? That’s the tension you want. Each horse is different, but my boy likes a gentle hand.” He did not want to talk about his horse. She captured his interest. He had to know why she held herself back, as if reserved, as if she were even more wary than before. Her heart was a puzzle he intended to solve. He gave the reins a quick snap and the horse and sleigh shot forward. “Feel how I did that?”

“Yes.” She nodded, her wool cap brushing against the side of his jaw. “This is like flying!”

“I take it you haven’t been in many sleighs?”

“Not once.” Wispy tendrils escaped from her knit hat and framed her face perfectly. If sweetness could be caught in an image, hers would be it. Bright blue eyes sizzling with excitement, her petal-pink mouth stretched into a tantalizing smile, her cheeks rosy. But there was more. A beautiful joy radiated outward from her heart. She could have been a winter sprite soaring with the snowflakes.

“You surely are a city girl. Hold on.” He snapped the reins lightly, clicking to Don Quixote. The stallion swiveled his ears, nodded his head and stretched out into a fast trot. The sleigh felt airborne, hardly deigning to touch the top layer of snow. “What do you think now?”

“We should slow your horse down. We could crash.”

“Hardly.” He kept hold of the reins long enough to direct Don Quixote toward the next hillside, nestled with snowmantled trees. “See how I tugged on the right rein?”

“Yes, I see. You would do the same to turn left.” A crinkle of worry cut into her porcelain forehead. “How do you slow down?”

“No more worrying.” He released his grip, leaving her in charge of the horse, and settled back, relaxing against the seat. “You’re driving, Clara. It’s that easy.”

“Sure, you can say that because you know how to stop.” But she was laughing, beginning to see that they were as safe as could be. Don Quixote, well aware of where they were headed, obliged by cantering along the cut trail. The fence line rolled by, a foraging moose looked up in disgust as they blew by and her musical laugh rang as clear as the truest bell. “I think I’ve stepped off the train into a wonderland. Storybooks are this magical—not real life.”

“Glad to hear you like this corner of Montana.”

“Oh, I do. It’s like a slice of heaven dropped to earth. I’ve never heard such peaceful quiet or breathed in cleaner air.”

“There’s no one back in Chicago who would miss you? A few old beaus, perhaps?”

“I thought we had already been plain about that. There were no beaus. Just one. Once.”

“Sometimes that’s all it takes.” He didn’t need to read the sadness that slipped across her face, for he could feel it square in his heart. That man, whoever he was, had hurt her. “What was his name?”

“Lars. He worked at the livery stable close to where I worked.” She set her delicate chin, a show of strength and not defeat. “And because you seem to think it’s your business, no, I don’t miss him, and I doubt he even remembers me.”

“How can that be?” He couldn’t imagine it, for he would never forget her. This moment, with the warm softness of her arm against his, was emblazoned on his soul forever. He would always recall the faint scent of roses, the silk of her hair against his jaw and the beat of desire rising in his blood. The desire for something he knew not—he might not know much about love and all the intimacy that went with it, but he knew one thing. He wanted more than what could be found at night with her. He wanted to wake each morning with her in his arms and her cheek resting on his chest. He wanted to go about his day’s work with thoughts of their closeness keeping him warm. Coming home to her in the evenings, to her smile, her embrace, her kiss. “You are too beautiful to forget.”

“There you are, trying to charm me again.” She shook her head as if to scold him, but her words were falsely light. Perhaps she was trying too hard to hide her sadness. “Joseph, you should try telling the truth for once.”

“But I am.”

“You think you mean that.” Snow clung to her face like tears. “You shouldn’t call me beautiful. It’s not true.”

“Is that what this Lars fellow told you?” Now things were making sense. “If he did, then there was something wrong with that man.”

“He met another woman, who was actually very beautiful, and he proposed to her instead.” She blinked hard, as if troubled by the snowflakes caught in her eyelashes.

He wasn’t fooled. “You fell in love with this man?”

“I cared for him very much. A huge mistake, as it turned out.” She nodded up ahead, where the trees lining one side of the slope gave way to snowy meadow and fence line. “Are we here? You never told me how to stop your horse.”

“That’s easy.” He covered her hands with his, not because it was necessary but because he wanted to. She was much smaller, her bones and muscles fragile when compared with his own. Stinging tenderness bruised him from the inside out, both a painful and a healing emotion at once as he gently tugged at the reins.

“Whoa, boy,” he crooned, and the sleigh slid to a halt. His heart went right on soaring. Clara turned to him, glowing with accomplishment.

“Thank you, Joseph. Driving was a lot more fun than I thought it would be. Don Quixote was a true gentleman.”

The stallion nickered, as if pleased with the compliment. All Joseph could hear was what Clara hadn’t told him about the man who had left her for another. He knew what that felt like. What it was to be found wanting, and how it could knock the starch out of you.

“Grub’s here!” Pa’s right-hand man, Grobe Sutter, called out over the sounds of hammering and sawing. The half-dozen ranch hands put down their tools, left their fence mending and started to amble over.

He had no more hopped out of the sleigh and offered Clara his hand to help her, than he caught sight of the men nearly running. They were mighty quick for fellows who had been at work before sunrise. Aiken Dermot shook the snow from his hat brim, ran his fingers through his hair and drew himself up full-height. His old school buddy had eyes only for the willowy woman in the worn gray coat. Jealousy nearly blinded him.

“Let me get the baskets,” Joseph told her. Not his job, but he didn’t like the way Aiken was sizing up the woman and nodding slowly, as if he thought he might try to nose his way in. “They’re mighty heavy. You wait for me in the sleigh.”

“I should be doing this, Joseph.” She paid him no heed, unaware of the way another hand, Lew Burton, tossed her an interested wink. With a smile and interest glinting in his eyes, he beat Aiken to the back of the sleigh.

“‘Afternoon, miss.” Lew tipped his hat as if he were the finest of dandies. “You must be new around here. I heard word that Mrs. Brooks had brought a new gal from back East. What I didn’t hear was that you were so darned pretty.”

Clara appeared shocked, as if she didn’t know what to say. Well, Joseph surely did.

“Enough of this.” He hadn’t anticipated every ranch hand they had making moon eyes at Clara. He stepped in between them. Red, racing jealousy flared through him like cannon fire. He jammed a basket in Lew’s direction. “You take this and get away from her.”

“Guess that answers my question. She’s his fiancée, boys,” Lew called out, looking danged disappointed. “Knew the rumors I heard from Zed at the depot couldn’t be right.”

“Yeah, Zed never gets it right.” Aiken’s chin went down. “Shucks. Why are the prettiest gals always taken?”

“I’m not—” She tried to explain.

“I’ll be back for the baskets,” Joseph interrupted, before his Clara could correct any of the men’s notions about her. There was no way he was letting a single one of them think she was on the market. No way in hell. Protective fury raged inside him, and he felt like a pawing bull ready to charge a rival. He handed off the last food baskets to Old Man Riley.

There. The meal was delivered. He whipped around, surprised to find Clara a few steps behind him. Shock marked her innocent face, and she took a step back.

“You interrupted me, Joseph. Why didn’t you tell them the truth?”

He seized her by the elbow, gritting his teeth and doing his best to ignore the flare of another emotion. Desire coursed through him like a newly sprung river. “Are you lookin’ to marry one of them?”

“What kind of question is that?” She tried to wrench her arm free.

Not going to happen. He could feel the curious stares of the men nearby, unable to take their gazes off Clara. He wanted to punch every one of them for it, but he couldn’t seem to let go of her. “Just get in the sleigh.”

“And who are you to boss me around?” She kept her voice low, perhaps aware, too, of those watching them. “Let go of me, Joseph. And no, I don’t want to marry any of them. I don’t want to marry anyone.”

“Why not?” He released her and held back the blanket so she could settle more easily onto the cushioned seat.

“Because I don’t want someone plying me with false compliments on one hand and commanding me on the other, trying to win my heart and then running off when someone better comes along.” Her chin went up, all fight, all pride. She gathered up the reins in her slender hands. “I’m here to work. I need this job, because I have nowhere to go and little money left to get there. You, why, this is all simply amusement to you, isn’t it? Biding your time until your mail-order bride arrives.”

“There isn’t a mail-order bride coming for me.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that.” Her eyes shadowed, growing darker, and for a moment he saw behind her anger to the hurt and the fears beneath. “You never did mean to be friends, did you? You meant to try to romance me for amusement, did you?”

“For amusement?” That was the furthest thing from his mind. How had things gone so wrong so fast?

“The next time we meet, Joseph, you had best stick to our agreement.”

“What agreement?” What in blazes was she talking about? And why was his head in such a muddle that he couldn’t make sense of anything? All he could read was her unhappiness, the pain pinching in the corners of her soft mouth, the pride that kept her slim back straight and her elegant chin set. How had this gotten so out of control? Why wasn’t she making a lick of sense to him?

“The one where we agreed I was simply the hired help?” She gave the reins a snap, and Don Quixote, the traitor, pricked his ears, nickered as if in apology and stepped out, drawing the sleigh away.

“I thought we were at least going to be friends.”

“This is an official end to our friendship,” she called over her shoulder.

He stood, boots planted in the snow, heedless to the men’s murmurs behind him and the buffeting wind and snow. All he saw was the sleigh growing smaller with distance, leaving him hollow inside. As if she were taking a piece of his heart with her, and there was not a thing he could do to stop her.

Chapter Five

Every time she thought about it, anger speared through her. Whether she was dusting Mary’s knickknacks in the parlor or drying dishes in the kitchen, any mention of Joseph by the other staff made her blood heat with fury. The mere sound of his footsteps in the hallway could make her remember the claiming brand of his fingers on her arm.

He’s not like Lars. She swiped the last dish dry and placed it carefully on the growing stack on the counter. If Joseph had known at the train depot that he was not speaking with his betrothed, he never would have said those things to her about marriage. He never would have charmed her or behaved so familiarly.

“Girl, you keep your mind on your work.” Mrs. Baker, the housekeeper, reached for a dry towel to wipe her hands. “Mrs. Brooks does not pay you to stare blankly off into thin air. Now go throw out the dishwater.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Clara draped the dish towel over the wall rack near the cookstove, her face heating. She had heard the censure in the woman’s tone. Mrs. Baker was the type of woman who enjoyed finding faults, but this time she was not wrong. Thoughts of Joseph had distracted her. She unhooked her coat from the peg by the kitchen door and heard a stair squeak in the stairwell behind her. She recognized Joseph’s gait. She wasn’t proud of it, but she already memorized the rhythm of his step.

Don’t think about him, Clara. She drew in a breath, fortifying herself. As she slipped into her coat, she did her best not to wonder if he was heading to the library to choose a book from the collection of leather-bound volumes, or if he would retreat to the parlor to chat with his parents.

“After you bring in a bucket of water, you are done for the night.” Mrs. Baker lifted the stack of dishes without a single clink of porcelain and stowed them on overhead shelves.

“Thank you, ma’am.” Clara hefted the enormous washbasin from the counter, careful not to slosh dirty soapy water all over the front of her. The scorching sides of the basin seared her fingertips, but she kept going. Suds bubbled and frothed at the basin’s rim, and every step she took, she didn’t take her eyes from the water line. It sloshed with her gait, and a soap bubble lifted and popped in midair.

“Let me get the door for you.” Joseph’s baritone rumbled as if out of a dream.

Not that she had any. No, she had given up dreaming years ago. Her chin shot up, her gaze lifted and her breath caught at his grim expression. He towered over her, taller than she’d remembered, his face dark with shadows and his big, impressive body tensed, as if poised for a fight. This was a side of Joseph she had not seen and had never imagined was there. Gone was his easygoing charm and friendly good humor, replaced by a stoic strength she hadn’t guessed at.

“Th-thank you.” She feared her stuttering and wispy voice betrayed her. Head down, she slipped through the door he held and into the welcoming dark of the porch, but even that disappointed her. There were no shadows to hide in as the door shut with a crisp click. Frost crunched beneath his boots as he followed her to the top of the steps.

She had done her best to avoid being alone with the man. As she scurried ahead of him, her mind wandered. Why had it been him who had happened to be going outside at the same moment she was? How was she going to face him, after leaving him to walk the quarter-mile distance home in the snow?

Shame burned through her like a fire’s blaze, remembering what she had done. Acting more like a spurned schoolgirl than an employee. The water sloshed over the front of her apron, the hot water soaking through her coat, dress and corset to wet her skin. Shoot. She repositioned the basin, wishing she could refocus her concentration as easily. Her every nerve attuned to the man trailing down the steps behind her, his presence as unmistakable as the snowmelt dripping off the roof and onto the back of her neck.

Silence fell between them, uncomfortably loud. It drowned out the singsong dripping of buildings and tree branches. It muffled the watery munch of her shoes on the slushy snow. It penetrated her like an arrow, invading tender flesh. Her hands quaked, sloshing hot water everywhere, as she bent and placed it on the ground. With every breath, awareness of him ebbed through her. Wordless, he halted on the pathway and his big shadow fell across her, hands braced on his hips, emphasizing his magnificent shoulders, and planted his feet, legs spread.

The shadow before her on the moonlit snow drew her gaze, and she upended the basin, hardly aware of the water pooling too close to her shoes. What fascination held her to him? Why couldn’t she pretend he was nothing to her, nothing at all?

“I’m waiting for your apology.” The low notes of his voice struck with displeasure. “You left me standing in front of the other men like a fool.”

She hung her head, feeling the weight of an uncertain emotion, a burden she could not name. Yes, she certainly knew this moment between them would come. Why else would she have avoided him so well the last few days?

Her stomach twisted tight and she straightened, the empty basin banging against her kneecap. She did not feel the bite of that pain, since a greater one grasped her with sharper teeth. Any moment now Joseph was going to say the words she dreaded. The ones that would hurt like nothing she had known. This is what she had wanted to avoid.

“Your being a fool was not my fault.” She faced him, unable to see what was on his countenance, whether it was anger or dislike of her. “Leaving you behind, that was a mistake. I can only apologize. I am sorry. It was wrong.”

“You apologize, and yet you blame me.”

The perfect round of a blinding white moon climbed the velvet black sky behind him, casting him in silhouette. It was a kindness, because she would not have to see that his regard for her had vanished. A regard she had not been able to accept. “You acted as if—”

“As if I were sweet on you? As if I wanted to punch any man who looked at you the way I did?”

His use of the past tense was not lost on her. Pain cracked through her chest. She did her best to ignore it. To draw herself up straight and to pretend she felt nothing for him, nothing at all. “You were acting strangely, Joseph. As if everything you said on that first night were true. We both know it isn’t. It can’t be.”

“I admit I thought you were someone else. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“Yes, thank you.” The crack of pain within her carved deeper into her tender heart. Why was she hurting? It made no sense. She was not sweet on the man. She had not been charmed by him. And if she said that enough times, she was sure to make it become true. “And what is it you wanted to hear, Joseph? That when I met marriageable men like Aiken and Lew, I would try to gain their interest?”

“I’ve hated knowing you were delivering their meals without me there.” A corner of his mouth twitched, but he remained as if in darkness. The only hint of levity was the lilt of his voice. “Maybe I was mistaken. You’ve come back each time without an engagement ring.”

“You’re teasing me now?”

“No. Just myself.” He eased closer, one step at a time, a solemn man of strength with a faint hint of humor crinkling the corners of his eyes. Moonlight graced him, hinting at the straight blade of his nose and his square-cut jaw. “I don’t understand how any man can take a first look at you and not see what I see.”

“What do you see?”

“A cozy fire in the hearth when I come through the front door after a hard day’s work and you waiting for me. A meal on the table and you to talk and laugh with over it.” He pulled the basin from her fingers and tossed it in the direction of the steps. It landed with a distant thud somewhere in the deep shadows.

“You see your own personal maid to tend fires, keep house and cook for you?” Her eyes pinched with honest emotion. “This is why I came for a job, not for a husband. I feel sorry for your betrothed.”

“There is no betrothed. Not yet.” He bit his tongue to keep from telling her the truth. He had already found his bride. Telling that to her only seemed to make her push him away. He laid his gloved hand against the side of her face, and immeasurable adoration glowed within him like the silvered moonlight. “You think I’ve been insincere.”

“Yes. Perhaps you didn’t mean to be.”

“No.” He had been telling her his heart. He let her step away from him, breaking his touch. Nothing could break the emotion glowing within him like an eternal flame. “I haven’t been around a lot of single women my age. I’m short on experience, but you have to know I meant no disrespect.”

“That I do.” Her eyes looked impossibly dark and deep. Her beauty must have enchanted the moon, for its pearled light followed her. “I suppose I can stop trying to avoid you?”

“Good idea, since the house isn’t that large. I might not see you, but I can hear you in the next room. I reckon you can do the same with me.”

“Perhaps.” Noncommittal, she dipped her hands into her coat pockets and pulled out home-knit mittens. She seemed to concentrate overly on the task of fitting her fingers into the warm wool.

Her silence was revealing. A whole range of feelings had moved through him from the moment she had taken Don Quixote’s reins and left him looking like a fool. Humor had been the first one, striking him hard. Impossible not to like a woman who could hold her own against a man. The others had chuckled, calling out advice to him on how to handle a woman, all good-natured stuff about how complicated they were and how smart the city girl was compared to a highcountry mountain man like him.

But more feelings, ones easily hidden at the time, had crawled to the surface. Rejection was one, reinforced whenever he heard but didn’t see her in the house. Sure, he might have caught sight of the swirl of her skirt as she left the room or the hint of rose water in the air when he entered the parlor. But emptiness was another emotion troubling him, carving out a hollow place within him that hadn’t been there before.

Hurt—that was something else he’d felt in the dark of night, in his room at the end of the hall. He’d sat at the window and looked out over the garden where Clara’s front window shone with lamplight, and he’d wondered if she felt as lonely as he did, more than she had ever known before. She had changed everything in his world—what he wanted and what he thought about. His sense of well-being was gone, blown to bits as if with a rifle’s bullet. He couldn’t lay his head on his pillow without wondering what it would be like to have her lying beside him or how sweet it would be to draw her into his arms and love her fully, the way a husband ought to love his wife.

He’d come to realize what he had done wrong. Romancing a woman was harder than it looked. The one thing he did not want was to be the reason she kept turning away from him, the way Lara had done long ago in his school days. That had stung at the time, sure, but this pain he felt right now hit powerfully enough to bring him to his knees. The one thing he couldn’t stand would be to lose the chance to love Clara for all the days of his life.

“I’m not looking for a housekeeper, just so you know.” He fell in stride beside her as she crunched and slid along the worn path away from the house. “I said it all the wrong way. I’ve got to get better at that. I meant I would be eager to come home to the woman. Her coziness, her laughter, her presence.”

“Oh.” She said the single word low and hushed, making it hard to know what she meant, if she understood or if she still thought him insincere. The wind tugged loose airy curls from her coiled-up braids to swirl invitingly against her face.

Everything within him ached to capture those fairy curls in his bare hands, to cradle the dear curve of her chin in his palm and taste her kisses. He longed to savor her heat and her every texture, to unbutton her, layer by layer, and lave kisses down her long, graceful neck and farther still. Blushing, he tried not to think about how much he craved to know more of her, to know all of her. The softness of her bosom, the flare of her hips, and what it would be like to lie intimately with her, to feel her legs entwined with his, to be joined as one.

Need, both sweet and vital, punched hard until it hurt. Just take it slow, Joseph. He veered off the broken path when she did, following the iced-over trail to the water pump. The moonlight fell at her feet, as if privileged to light her way. Feeling the same, he grabbed a bucket from the stack before she could, hung it on the notch and covered her hand when she reached for the pump handle.