No, Brixton definitely wouldn't.
“But what if a man doesn't have a sweetheart? Or a lady, either?”
“There's always a secret admirer who wants that kiss, even if the lady's married,” Gracey said. “No one takes offense. It's all in good fun.”
“Well, Gracey. Let's go get that picnic over and done. Sounds like we've got some new hats to plan.”
Gracey pinked again. “Oh, I'll just plunk some goldenrod and meadow flowers on this old thing.”
“Nonsense. I've got just the idea.”
“Don't matter. Jake tries but he'll never win. Even as a kid, he wasn't that nimble on a horse. Not like Brix. Now being the preacher, Jake stays dignified. It would never do for him to take a tumble.”
“Whether he wins or not, I want to make you a new hat, as a thank-you for caring for the children so many times.”
“Why, thank you kindly, Minda,” her new friend said bashfully. “I'd like that.”
Jake came inside to join them. “Afternoon, Minda.” He nodded politely, then offered her his arm. His smile was genuine, and her resentment eased. What had Gracey said? It wasn't easy doing what you had to do.
“Minda, let's go out to the field and get your husband to join us. The children just told me he didn't go back to Texas after all.”
“Yet,” she said softly, but she knew Jake had heard.
* * * *
Brix leaned his scythe against the wagon and watered the draft horse. Sweat ran down his aching back, and he groaned as Jake approached the wheat field. He was hungry, hot, and hurting, and definitely in no mood to get preached at.
Hell, then he saw Minda at Jake's side. The drab brown dress she wore was the ugliest thing outside of a convent, but it didn't stop his manhood from throbbing. She could wear a feed sack trimmed with buffalo chips and he'd still hanker after her. He knew exactly what she looked like without any clothes at all.
Damn Norman Dale, despite the fact he'd likely already crossed the Pearly Gates. Marrying Minda had seemed like a good idea at the time. But Brix also damned himself. Making love to Minda had seemed like a good idea, too. Since then, he could hardly meet her eyes.
“The kids told me you're hanging around,” Jake said pleasantly, his feet stumbling a bit on the stubbled field. Truth to tell, Jake might have lived much of his life in Paradise, but he'd spent it stripping beds and keeping his ma's accounts.
“It's not what you're thinking,” Brix said, avoiding his wife. “Silly's been sick. And Perkins is still on the loose. Unless you heard different?”
“Sadly, no.” Jake's jaw clenched. “Sheriff Pelton heard that the gang hit up the livery in Genoa yesterday morning while the townsfolk were in church. They don't even rest on the Lord's Day anymore.
“Well, they don't strike me as a god-fearing bunch. Don't like it that they're striking in broad daylight. Sneaking up under cover of darkness seemed their way up to now.” He couldn't help a glimpse of Minda then. Her face turned white as that wedding veil. All he could think about was holding her close for comfort. Forever.
Jake's talk chased that thought away. “Bob hopes they leave us alone now and head for the Sand Hills. That's far enough away for them to dupe those ranchers into buying their ill-gotten steeds.”
Brix felt a smidge of confusion. He'd been wanting Silly's health to return and the gang to leave, so he could be on his way. But the scent of Minda's rose perfume right now trounced over the smell of fresh-threshed wheat, making him think he just might miss her.
She spoke, and out of politeness, he turned to her. Her eyes were shadowed with worry, but bright as rainbows anyway. “Surely along the way the horses would be recognized.”
At those eyes, his heart thumped, and to cover his feelings, Brix scoffed. “Ahab and his boys are mighty good at disguise. They paint over a blaze or socks on the fetlock.”
Jake looked confused, and Minda gave a little shrug that moved her bosom. Damn, Brix had only tasted her breasts a hundred times that night, not the million he wanted.
Needed.
“That means covering up a horse's white legs and spots on its forehead,” Minda said.
A dance of pride rippled Brix's spine. “Yep. They also dye manes and tails. Dapple a chestnut to look piebald. And they can counterbrand. Burn in a bar over a regular brand, add something bogus top or below.”
“And I do know they can expertly forge bills of sale,” Jake said.
“My heavens.” Minda gave off that scent of roses again. “I had no idea.”
“Not so much like your dime novel.” Brix couldn't help but grin.
Minda gave him a shy smile. “Not much at all. That plot had them rescue abused horses from evil landowners. They didn't shoot innocent men in the knee or rob decent folks during church. It was the bounty hunters after them who were the mean old villains.”
Heat, not from the high noon sun, warmed Brix's face. She was so damn beautiful. Could Jake tell Brix had made his unwanted bride a true wife? Had he defiled her for some other man who might care for her with honest love?
The image of Caldwell Hackett kissing her hand raged in his mind, and Brix puffed out angry breath. Whether he—or she—wanted it, Minda was his wife fair and square.
Minda's little smile disappeared. She moved on her heels, impatient. “We're taking the children on a picnic. You're invited to attend.”
“I just might do that, Miz Haynes.” He smirked at Jake's big wide eyes. He didn't care a whit that Jake and Gracey had been on first-name terms for twenty years.
* * * *
The bread melted on his tongue like snow on sunshine, the jam reminding him of his wife's sweet lips. And the river tumbling along its timber-studded banks might as well flow with whiskey, so relaxed and peaceable Brix felt.
“Good fixins here, Miz Haynes,” he drawled, leaning lazily against the trunk of a cottonwood tree. She sat close, but not close enough. So he slid next to her until they touched. She twitched away, and he couldn't help grinning. “Won't be long before Cookie's sourdough'll be breaking my teeth.”
Yep, this picnic had been a good idea. The wheat would wait. No reason not to enjoy the green of God's rolling prairie hilltops and the wind rippling the tallgrass. Not to mention sensible food and a fine-looking woman, too.
“Well, thank you for joining our picnic, but you might at least use my given name in public.” She stuck her pretty nose in the air.
“That's only for private, Miz Haynes,” he said, hating the sudden reminder, “and it won't happen again. Promised you that.”
“Yes. So you did,” Minda murmured after a long stare. She turned to Silly napping on the blanket next to her.
Her hat was as ugly as her dress, but that didn't stop his desire. He'd noticed the pretty pink thing she was making for Katie, but instead of some sweet confection of her own, it was Ida Lou's grubby brimmed hat that kept the sun from her face today. And her hair was stuffed tight under it.
But he recalled with no effort at all her long flowing hair and the pretty purple dress she'd worn yesterday when he'd told her he'd be leaving soon, when all along he wanted to kiss her senseless and renew their night of love. Right now, a ways off, Jake and Gracey bickered with affection, and envy stabbed him.
Minda got to her knees and looked over at the kids playing at the water's edge. “I can't see them all from here.”
“Don't worry. Taught the kids to swim myself. Jake's too.”
That seemed to surprise her. “Why, when?”
“Now, Miz Haynes, you don't surely think this is the only visit hereabouts I ever made?”
She gave him another stare deep from behind those pansy eyes. Damn, she was beautiful, even in those revolting duds.
“Well, Mr. Haynes, I don't rightly know anything about you at all,” she said, nose high once again.
Like it had wings of its own, his hand flew up to touch her face. And she let him.
“Hey, Brix?” Jake interrupted, busy loading the baskets.
Brix left his fingers on Minda's cheek for an extra second, and he felt not a smidge of guilt for not helping. He'd started hacking wheat in the dawn's rosy light and hated every second. No high minded moral person would deprive him of some relaxation right about now.
And, he grinned, Minda hadn't nagged once.
“Yep?”
“You and Minda are entering the bonnet race next week, aren't you?”
His wife's eyes tossed him a dare. A wicked little smile flickered at those delicious lips. “Silliest notion I ever heard,” Brix said.
“The winner gets a purse of forty dollars,” Jake said, loading the wagon.
“Won't be around then, most likely.” Brix said, hearing Minda's harrumph. She got up quick, and he lolled, liking the look of her helping Jake with the cleanup.
Still, Brix had to admit forty dollars was a fine goal.
“I heard after church yesterday that Caldwell Hackett's got a new medicine hat mustang.” Jake nodded casually, bending down to fold up a blanket.
A stew started in Brix's head and heart right then that would likely simmer for days. Damn Hackett. Those black-speckled ponies were considered powerful luck by the Indians.
Brix himself had a high regard for the people of the Plains.
He got to his feet and headed for the riverbank. “Gonna check the kids.” He needed something to do to cool his face and fury, and the long ridge of flesh inside his denims. It had started to heat up at the swish of his wife's backside. A cold swim might do the trick.
Damn. Hackett with a new horse was a powerful threat. Jake couldn't sit upright on a pincushion but Caldwell now, he downright wasted his horsemanship plunked behind a teacher's desk. He might be a town boy, but he'd ridden like the wind before he could walk.
And the fool had already humiliated Brixton once.
Just then Katie burst through the thicket, followed by Jake's ladder of boys. “Uncle Brix, Neddie-boy's gone!”
“What do you mean, gone? Thought you kept an eye out?” Fear replaced his lust and anger.
“I did! We've been playing fine ... but then he was gone!” She burst into tears.
“Show me.”
The kids led him downstream ten yards or so, but all he found caught in the dead branches reaching out of the water was a soaking length of brown wool.
Katie sobbed. “That used to be his toy dog. Oh, Uncle Brix, does that mean he fell in after it? Did he, he didn't drown did he?”
“'Course not.” His own gut tightened with unspeakable dread. Sure the kids had learned to swim last summer, but likely they hadn't practiced much. The river was still full from that storm, the current stronger than a kid even during drought.
Besides, Brix knew from bungled river crossings on the trail just how strong panic could be.
He scurried to the water's edge, ready to jump in. But as he kicked off his boots, he tossed a quick prayer up toward heaven, too. Although he was by no means a worshipful man, he couldn't bear losing something else he never thought he wanted.
Chapter Ten
Heart pounding with each footstep, Minda rushed through a thicket of willow and larkspur to gather the sobbing Katie in her arms. She held off her own tears even though the pain of losing Ned cut into her flesh as cruelly as a whip.
The terror she'd felt during Priscilla's mysterious illness had returned ten-fold. Katie held on to Minda like she herself was drowning.
Next to them, Jake tended his knot of boys tied together by tears.
Waist high in the river, Brixton grabbed the water this way and that as if defying the current. Minda shivered with a new and tortured fear. She might lose him, too.
Back in Pennsylvania, she'd seen the Allegheny once, and compared to it, this was a rivulet, but she knew the power of water. Brixton was sure to return, but it wouldn't take much to claim such a little child.
“I'll search downriver on foot,” Jake said to Brixton, then told Minda, “Hopefully he just wandered away and didn't fall in at all. But if he did...” He touched her shoulder in gentle reassurance. “Brix has years of know-how rescuing bogged cattle. Neddie won't be any trouble at all.”
Brixton turned his head to acknowledge Jake, and Minda saw his bleak, hard eyes. They hadn't been married but days, yet she knew what the look meant. He didn't like losing control, and he'd heaped this tragedy on her. After all, she had charge of tending the children.
That was the only reason he'd wed her, and she had failed the night of the storm, after all. Neddie had confessed to sneaking to the barn to lullaby the cows, leaving it unlocked when he came back to bed.
But the situation between her and Brixton didn't matter one whit now. She prayed silently as the river sent her husband on.
Katie left Minda to wave her uncle along the bank for a few feet.
“Be careful,” Minda called, fearing she'd screeched.
Jake's eyes turned black with worry. “Damn fool,” he said under his breath, but Minda heard anyway.
“Reverend!”
“You can call me Jake, Minda. But right now, I don't have any other appropriate word. I pray you and the Lord forgive me for my lack of sanctity.”
“But Brixton can swim. He taught the children,” she said anxiously.
“Sure he can. But sandbars can grab a leg and break it. And there's quicksand in the shallows and in many places along the riverbank.”
“Oh, merciful heavens. Quicksand?” Minda's world teetered on its end and sink into an abyss of dread. “Doesn't Brixton know all that?”
Before Jake turned on his heel to start his search, he nodded and gave Minda's hand a squeeze. “Sure he does. Quicksand won't snare a man, but a child can easily get mired up in it. But right now, Brix's thinking with his heart, not his head.”
“But he knows the outdoors,” she said, squeezing back in a definite panic.
“Minda, can't you see?” Jake kept his voice gentle, but Minda heard what he was really saying. “I'm not just thinking of Brix out there.”
Of course, he meant Neddie. Most likely it hurt him to say the name as much as it did Minda to think it. But think about Ned she must. She must be prepared, a luxury she hadn't been given about anything in Paradise.
Neddie might be able to thrash his little limbs in swimming motions against the water for a time, but he would soon grow weary. Roots and sandbars might trap him and hold him under, and quicksand might take him from them forever.