A Creed Country Christmas (15 page)

Left the kitchen.

Gracie had climbed into bed with Daisy and Billy-Moses. Theresa sat cross-legged on the foot of the mattress, reading aloud from, of all things, the Sears, Roebuck catalog.

Juliana stood in the open doorway for a while, unnoticed, while the children listened raptly to descriptions
of china platters, teacups and silverware. The words, she realized, didn’t matter. It was the sound of another human voice that held their attention.

She slipped away. In Lincoln’s room, she filled the china basin with fresh water from the matching pitcher and scrubbed her teeth with a brush and baking soda. She washed her face, unplaited her hair, brushed it thoroughly, and plaited it again.

Her nightgown felt chilly, so she draped it over the screen in front of the fireplace where a cheery blaze crackled. Lincoln must have lit the fire just before supper.

She unbuttoned the blue dress, stepped out of it. Took off her shoes and rolled her stockings down and off. Untied the laces of her petticoat and let the garment fall.

She was standing there, in just her camisole and bloomers, when the door opened and Lincoln came in.

He went still at the sight of her.

She imagined that the firelight behind her had turned her undergarments transparent, and that sent a rush of embarrassment through her, but she made no move to cover herself.

Lincoln started to back out of the room.

“Wait,” Juliana said with dignity. “Don’t go. Please.”

He stepped over the threshold again, closed the door behind him. The conflict in his handsome face might have been comical, if she hadn’t been so concerned with the pounding of her heart. He opened his mouth to speak, but when no sound came out, he closed it again.

“You asked me to tell you when I felt ready,” she reminded him. Fingers trembling, she began untying the tiny ribbons that held her camisole together in front.

“And?” He rasped the word.

“I’m ready.”

L
eaning back against the bedroom door, Lincoln shook his head once and gave a raspy sigh. “I’m not so sure about that,” he said. “Your being ready, I mean.”

Was he rejecting her? Quickly, cheeks throbbing with heat, Juliana stopped untying the camisole ribbons and stood frozen in injured confusion. Without intending to, she allowed her deepest fear to escape. “Don’t you—don’t you want me, Lincoln?”

He blew out a breath. “Oh, I
want
you, all right,” he said.

“Then, why…?”

“My brother said some things to me today that I need to think about,” Lincoln explained calmly. “And, anyway, you’ve been through a lot lately. I won’t have you doing this because you think you ought to, or because you want to get it over with.”

“Get it over with?”
She was astounded, but she probably sounded angry.

His powerful shoulders moved in a shruglike motion. “Making love can be painful for the woman the first time,” he reminded her. “And it’ll be more so, in a lot of other ways, if you’re offering yourself to me for the wrong reasons.”

He was such a—
lawyer
, building a case against what they both needed and wanted. “
What
wrong reasons?” she demanded, careful to keep her voice down, so none of the children would overhear. Earlier, he’d found her visiting his first wife’s grave. Did he think she was trying to exert some kind of
claim
on him, somehow supplant Beth’s memory? Use her body to push the other woman out of his heart and mind?

Lincoln raised one eyebrow. “Well,” he began, “you could be grateful, because I’m willing to adopt Daisy and Bill and raise them as our own.”

Indignant, Juliana snatched her nightgown off the fireplace screen and pulled it on over her head, meaning to remove her undergarments later, when he was gone. As luck would have it, though, she got her arms tangled in the sleeves somehow and ended up flailing about like a chicken inside a burlap sack.

Lincoln laughed; she heard him come toward her, his footsteps easy on the plank floor.

She felt him righting the nightgown.

When he tugged it down so her head popped through the neck hole, his eyes were dancing.

“Don’t you
dare
make fun of me!” Juliana sputtered.

He chuckled again, but there was something tender in the way he held her shoulders. “I wouldn’t do that,” he said.

As if she weren’t humiliated enough already, hot tears sprang to her eyes.

“Listen,” Lincoln said, after placing a light kiss on the top of her head. “Once we’ve made love, there will be no going back. It’s got to be right.”

She stared at him, aghast.
Once we’ve made love, there will be no going back.
Was he having second thoughts, thinking of annulling the marriage on the grounds that they had yet to consummate it?

“May I remind you, Mr. Creed, that getting married was
your
idea?”

“I’m well aware of that,” he said affably.

“But now you want to make sure there’s a way to
go back?
”

Surprise widened his eyes. “Hell,
that
isn’t what I meant,” he said.

Relief swept over Juliana, leaving her almost faint. She hoped to high heaven her reaction didn’t show, because she’d made enough of a fool of herself as it was, behaving with such wanton abandon. “I practically
threw myself
at you,” she fretted, “and you might as well have flung a bucket of cold water all over me!”

He sighed, yet again. “Oh,” he said.

“Oh,” Juliana repeated, in the same tone Wes had used when he’d repeated the word back to her that afternoon, in reference to Kate’s reasons for avoiding the ranch.

Lincoln shoved a hand through his hair. “Maybe we ought to just start over—”

“Maybe,” Juliana shot back, “you should go off by yourself and
think
about whatever it was that your brother said to you, out there on the range.”

Something flickered in his eyes. “I believe I’ve come
to terms with that,” he said, and his voice sounded different. It was lower than before, and gruff in a way that made Juliana tingle in peculiar places. Her mouth went dry.

She waited for him to explain further, but, of course, he didn’t, being a man and used to keeping his own counsel. He raised his hands to the sides of her face, the way he’d done after the marriage ceremony, and then he kissed her.

The wedding kiss had rocked her, but this one was even more intense. He parted her lips and used his tongue, and the pleasure of that was so startling that Juliana would have cried out if her mouth hadn’t been covered.

She slipped her arms around his neck and rose onto her tiptoes, caught up in her response like a leaf swept up into a whirlwind.

His tongue.

The way his body fit against hers.

The way her own expanded, ready to take him in.

All of it left her dazed, and when he finally stopped kissing her, he had to grab her shoulders again, because she swayed.

Blinking, she stared up at him.

“
That
, Mrs. Creed, should settle any question of whether I want you or not.”

It had certainly settled the question of whether or not
she
wanted
him
. She most definitely did, and the consequences be damned.

“Then you’ll make love to me?” she asked, brazen, flushed with desire.

“Inevitably,” he answered, but he was releasing her shoulders, turning to leave the room. Only her pride, or what remained of it, kept her from scrambling after him, begging him not to leave.

“When?” she croaked.

He paused without turning to face her, and tilted his head back, considering. “When it’s right,” he finally replied.

And then he was gone.

Juliana felt like some wild creature, caught and caged. She stood there trembling with rage and frustration for a few moments, then took up her brush, undid her braid and brushed her hair with long, furious strokes that left it crackling around her face like fire.

Once she’d regained her composure enough to risk leaving the room, she went to look in on the children. Billy-Moses, Daisy and Gracie lay curled against one another like puppies, sleeping soundly. Theresa was in Gracie’s bed with her eyes closed.

Just as Juliana would have closed the door, though, the child spoke.

“Miss Mitchell—I mean, Mrs. Creed? Will you sit with me—just for a little while?”

Juliana approached the bed, sat down on its edge. Smoothed Theresa’s dark hair with a motherly hand. “Sure,” she said softly. “Is something bothering you?”

A stray moonbeam played over the girl’s face, was gone again. “Joseph remembers the folks at home,” she said. “I do, too, sort of, but mostly I remember going away and living in a lot of different schools.”

Juliana simply waited.

“What if we get home, Joseph and me, and they can’t keep us for some reason? Or don’t want us after all?”

Juliana’s heart ached. “You saw the letter they sent,” she said gently. “They want you.”

“But maybe somebody like Mr. Philbert will come and take us away again.”

“I don’t think that will happen,” Juliana said. Although unlikely, it
was
possible. “Tom is going with you, remember. He’ll make sure you and Joseph get settled, and keep you safe all along the way.”

“Folks might be mean to us. After all, Mr. Dancingstar is an Indian, too.”

That, too, was possible. Juliana wished she could make the trip with the three of them, and stand guard over them, but of course she couldn’t. Gracie and Daisy and Billy-Moses needed her—if Wes Creed could be believed, so did Lincoln. She had to face Mr. Philbert and settle things, once and for all, so she and Lincoln could go on with their lives.

“Don’t worry, Theresa,” she said. “That won’t change anything. And Mr. Dancingstar
will
take care of you.”

“I almost wish I could stay here with you, but I’d miss Joseph something fierce, and he might forget to practice his reading if I don’t keep an eye on him.”

Juliana blinked back tears. “Will you write to me when you get home? Tell me all about the trip, and what things are like in North Dakota?”

Theresa nodded and reached up with both arms for a hug.

She and Juliana clung together for a little while.

“Will you write me back?” Theresa asked finally, settling back onto her pillow. “Long, long letters?”

“Long, long letters,” Juliana promised, choking back
more tears. She leaned over, kissed the girl’s smooth forehead. “Now, go to sleep, Theresa. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve.”

“You don’t think I believe all those stories about Saint Nicholas, do you?” Theresa asked in a whisper. “I’m twelve, you know. Besides, Joseph says it’s all malarkey and I oughtn’t to expect anything much.”

With yet another pang, Juliana tucked the covers under Theresa’s chin. “You mustn’t stop hoping for things,” she said. “Not ever. That’s what keeps us all going.”

“But Saint Nicholas
is
just a story?”

Juliana thought of the presents hidden in the top of Mrs. Creed’s wardrobe. They were simple things, but seen through the eyes of these children, who’d never owned much of anything, they would gleam like Aladdin’s treasure. “Yes,” she admitted. “There was a real Saint Nicholas, once upon a time, and a lot of legends have grown up around his life, but they’re just that, legends. Still, there
are
people in the world who have generous hearts.”

Lincoln was one of them. Wes Creed was another. And, of course, Tom Dancingstar.

Theresa sighed, closed her eyes and settled into her dreams.

Juliana waited until she was sure the child was asleep, kissed her cheek and returned to the corridor.

She’d left the bedroom door open; now it was closed.

She stopped, put a hand to her throat before reaching to turn the knob.

The room was dark except for the flickering glow cast by the fireplace. Lincoln was already in bed, but sitting up with pillows behind his back. His chest was bare, she could tell, but his face was in shadow, making his expression impossible to read.

“I wondered if you’d come back to this room after our—discussion,” he said.

“There is nowhere else to sleep,” Juliana answered, and the formal tone she employed was at least partly an act. She wasn’t angry with Lincoln, just confused. “Unless, of course, you’d prefer I retired to the barn like Reverend Dettly did.”

Lincoln gave a snort. “The reverend is a man,” he reminded her. “And despite being on a first-name basis with the Good Lord, he carries a gun in his saddlebags, right alongside his Bible.”

Juliana folded her arms, keeping a stubborn distance from Lincoln Creed’s bed, even though it was the very
place she most wanted to be at that moment. “If you’re going to be argumentative, perhaps
you
should sleep in the barn,” she said, jutting out her chin. It was all bravado, and everything she said seemed to be coming out wrong—thinking one thing, saying quite another. What was the matter with her? “I was prepared to forgive you for your rudeness, Mr. Creed, but now I’m not so sure.”

He chuckled, a low, rumbling sound, entirely masculine and not entirely polite. “That’s very generous of you,
Mrs
. Creed,” he answered. “Especially since I was trying to look out for your best interests, and if anybody ought to be apologizing around here, it’s you.”

“You were looking out for your own interests, not mine!” she whispered accusingly.

He patted the mattress. “Get into bed, Juliana. I’m tired and I won’t be able to sleep with you standing there like you’ve got a ramrod stuck down the back of your nightgown.”

Since her side of the bed was against the wall, she would have to crawl over him to get there, perhaps even straddling his limbs in the awkward effort. She wasn’t
about
to do any such thing.

“Juliana,” he repeated.

“The least you could do is get up and allow me to obey your
orders
with some semblance of dignity!”

He laughed then, though quietly. “You really want me to throw back the covers and stand up?” he teased. “Under the circumstances, that might be more than you bargained for.”

Juliana reasoned that if she couldn’t see Lincoln’s face, he couldn’t see
hers
, either, and that was a mercy, since she knew she was blushing again. It was the curse of redheaded women. “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” she blurted, going to the side of the bed and scrambling over him, trying to keep her nightgown from riding up in the process.

Lincoln chortled at her predicament, and that made her want to pause long enough to pummel him with her fists. Once she’d crossed him, like some mountain range, she plopped down hard on her back and hugged her arms tightly across her chest, staring up at the ceiling.