Red Snow Bride (Wolf Brides Book 2) (13 page)

His eyes flashed with fever bright excitement as he pulled next to me and here, in the deep afternoon shadows, in the shelter of the Dawson woods, he leaned over and kissed me. His hands cupped my face, and his fingers intertwined in my tresses that had bounced free of their pins. Gently, he urged my mouth open with his own. My breath froze as his tongue brushed softly against mine, and I gripped his forearms to keep him near.

Beigha moved to the side, separating us, and I stared at his cocky smile like I was too drunk on champagne to find my mental facilities again.

“Hup,” he said, kicking his horse into a trot. He looked behind him once, and humor danced in his eyes. I don’t know what he saw on my face, but a short laugh burst from his lips.

My horse moved to follow, and thank goodness for that. The man had kissed me too thoroughly and now my hands didn’t seem to want to work right with the reins.

Kissing while riding—yet another lesson my hoity-toity instructors forgot to teach.

Lorelei

“Look there,” Jeremiah said, leaning his horse into mine and so close, I could almost feel his warmth through my own layers of fabric.

Squinting through the trees, I could just make it out.

“That right there is the start of your house, Mrs. Dawson.”

I inhaled sharply as my body tingled with excitement at the sound of our name upon his lips. I gripped the reins and squeezed Beigha with my knees. Luke worked feverishly and, to my open astonishment, had three quarters of the stone hearth already completed. How could a man accomplish so much in a day? His energy seemed endless as he waved and smiled before going straight back to work slathering some kind of sealant between two stones. Kristina hauled the rocks to him one by one, and while they looked to completely weigh her down, he snatched them from her like they were pebbles.

“I want to help.”

Jeremiah offered me a slow smile. “The house will mean more if you do.”

I liked that he didn’t tell me to sit there and look pretty as the gentlemen I was accustomed to had done my entire life.

Kristina propped her fists onto her hips and blew a strand of sandy blond hair out of her face as she spied us. “Hey!” she yelled. Beigha tossed her head as the woman ran for us. “Oh, she’s just beautiful!” She held the reins and looked into my horse’s dark face. “Such pretty eyes, and she takes a bit and saddle? What’s her name?”

Excitement bubbled out of me as I said, “Beigha.”

Kristina beamed. “How dandy, and now we both have flashy Indian ponies.”

Another layered sense of belonging drifted over me. My situation wasn’t ideal by any standards, but I’d been accepted into this little family. I had a husband, and a horse of my own, a brother-in-law who’d spent the entire day constructing a hearth for a home to house me, and a friend to share this challenging experience with. So I had to camp in the woods, and didn’t have modern day comforts. There were still bright spots in my life, and they somehow weighed more than the dark.

Kristina walked beside Beigha with her hand resting on her twitching withers. Jeremiah rode on my other side, strong, constant and with an easy smile at the ready just for me.

“I’m going to go put her up and then help you haul the rocks,” I said.

“It’s rough work,” Kristina warned. “My hands are already torn up.” Indeed they looked a little battered. One of her fingers was even bleeding.

Determined, I said, “I’m up for it.”

Jeremiah showed me Beigha’s stall and where to put her tack. The brushes sat on a rail against the wall and after a quick rub down and a bucket of water, Jeremiah led me outside with a gentle hand resting on my lower back. My, but that man made my insides warm right up.

“I want you wearing these.” He handed me an oversized pair of roughed up work gloves.

“Are these yours?”

“Yes, but I’ll be fine. If we work quickly, we could get the hearth done and start on the foundation.” He pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket and on it was a drawing of a bunch of squares and numbers I couldn’t make heads or tails of. “I thought we could have the kitchen and den as soon as you walk in, our bedroom over here, and two small bedrooms on the other side, right here.”

“Three bedrooms?”

“They’ll be small but necessary if we’re planning on having a family someday.” So casual was his tone, I glanced up to make sure he wasn’t teasing. His eyes were steady and serious under his cowboy hat. “I mean to have a family with you, Lorelei.”

I had to swallow my emotions down before I answered, or he’d see just how much his desire to have children with me affected my feelings for him. Jeremiah didn’t need an oversensitive woman. Not out here in this rough land. He needed a level-headed one. “I’d like that, too.”

Daniel had wanted an heir, but he’d never talked about wanting to start a family with me. It was just the necessity for a son to pass his wealth and name to that was important. Not whom he put his child in. While I’d accepted this as normal for the society I lived in, now I wasn’t so sure it had ever been all right by me—not deep down in the tender bits of me that had feelings and wants. Not the pieces of me that hungered for affection and love.

Kristina had been right that hauling rocks was hard work, but on top of that, we couldn’t carry them fast enough to keep up with those tenacious men. Like beavers on some northern dam, they never stopped or even slowed. While Kristina and I struggled to work faster, they never pushed or gave us impatient looks. On the contrary, they joked around, or went over Jeremiah’s rough floor plan, or mixed mortar. My excitement grew as the hearth angled in and with the men balanced on tall, crude wooden ladders as they created the final lip.

Awestruck, I stared at the looming fireplace that had been built in a day.

Jeremiah scrambled down the ladder and stood by me while he admired their work. “You build the hearth first so it doesn’t pull on your foundation,” he explained.

“Have you built many of these?” I asked.

He shrugged. “A few. We moved around a lot when we were little. Built many a home with Pa and my brothers.” His nostrils flared delicately. “You’re bleeding.”

“What?” I searched my arms and low and behold a long, shallow cut graced my forearm. “Oh, it must have been from resting the rocks against my arms when I carried them. Some of them were jagged.”

“Hmm,” he grunted. “Kristina, we got any clean cloth?”

“Maybe in the barn.”

He jogged toward it while Kristina pulled me by the hand to the simmering fire near the old house. “Can’t be too careful with injuries out here. Doctors are a rare find this far out, and even small hurts can bring you big troubles.”

I plopped into the singed rocking chair while she pumped water into a pan and set it on the fire. I suppose the cut wasn’t as shallow as I’d thought because it was starting to drip.

“You ain’t scared of blood?” she asked me warily.

“I suppose not. I haven’t really seen too much of it bar the occasional scrapes and cuts of childhood.”

“Well, good because this probably ain’t the last you’ll see of it around here.”

Jeremiah returned with two strips of white cotton linen. Without a word, he dipped one in the boiling water and cleaned the cut slowly until the bleeding had stopped. My lips were pursed at the sting, but I rather enjoyed the view of my stranger husband bent over my arm in concentration. After bandaging it, he leaned forward and smelled my arm, and with a slight nod of the head, he kissed it lightly and stood. “Luke and I are going to start measuring out lumber but I want you taking it easy.”

“I can help Kristina start on dinner.”

He hesitated and a flame of worry flickered in his dark eyes.

“Aw, piss off, Jeremiah,” Kristina said with a wink. “She’s fine. I won’t let nothin’ happen to your wife, now go on.”

After he left, I said, “I can’t believe he lets you talk to him like that.”

“Who, Jeremiah? A man doesn’t
let
me do anything. And besides, deep down he likes when I’m vulgar. He’s just too mannerly to admit it.”

“I heard about him proposing to you,” I blurted out.

“Yeah, that wouldn’t have worked. We would’ve killed each other by the end of the first day. Did he tell you we spent a season up here, without Luke? We worked well together but we bickered like two panthers fightin’ over territory.” She looked up from a pile of meat she’d been sawing on with a faraway expression behind her distracted smile. “Naw, Luke was always my man. If somethin’ ever happened to him, I’d never marry another.”

Her heartfelt admission eased a tiny sliver of green jealousy that had been waiting in my heart since Jeremiah told me of his proposal to my sister-in-law. It hadn’t worked out between them because it wasn’t supposed to. Though they hadn’t been able to see it at the time, he was being groomed for me while my troubles were brewing hundreds of miles away.

By the time the venison was finished and the potatoes browned over the fire, the Dawson brothers had managed to secure the main beams that made up the frame of the house and already started nailing the floor boards down around the hearth.

“Is it normal for men to build houses so quickly?”

“They ain’t normal men. Here, set this over there.” She yanked the cast iron pot from the embers with the handle wrapped in the skirts of her dress.

Gathering my own skirts, I took it and set it beside the rocker to cool. She dug the potatoes out of the fire with a stick and with dancing hands tossed them onto a plate. “I have a pail of milk inside the door of the barn. You want to grab it while I tell the boys supper’s on?”

The barn was a short walk and the bucket was just where she said it would be and covered with a cheesecloth. What I hadn’t expected was for it to be so blasted heavy. I sloshed it with every step.

“Let me help,” Jeremiah said from right behind me.

I nearly jumped right out of my skin. Eying the distance between us and our future house, I glowered. “How in tarnation did you get here so fast? I just saw you all the way over there.”

He hauled the milk pail and said over his shoulder, “I ran.”

“Oh, he ran?” I grumbled. “Faster than a horse on fire, he ran.”

His shoulders shook but I hadn’t a guess what he found so humorous. He was much too far away to have heard me.

Dinner was warm and satisfying after a long day. I’d missed lunch somewhere along the line without noticing until my stomach rumbled at the smell of the roasted venison when Luke pulled the lid from the iron pot. “How do you eat these?” I asked, eyeing my ash bathed potato.

“You can peel the skin off real easy,” Jeremiah said. He picked his up and took a long strip right off with his fingers.

Easy enough if my potato wasn’t still on fire. I’d have to wait for it to cool. Maybe Jeremiah didn’t have any feeling in his fingers after working all day in the cold, and the majority of it without gloves. His plate was completely clean before I’d even taken my second bite and without a word, he and Luke slunk into the waning evening light to return to work on the cabin. Relentless, tireless men. I sank back into the rocking chair and watched them work. They didn’t seem to say anything to each other, yet they knew exactly where to put every board, where to help hold lumber, when to hand the other more nails. The speed and efficiency with which they worked was downright disconcerting.

“What’re you thinking?” Kristina asked as the firelight danced across her face. “I can see you’re workin’ something out over there.”

“I’ve just never seen men quite like them.”

“Nor will you ever again. We got lucky they mail-ordered us if you ask me.”

“Are all country men so fast and strong?”

She shoved a giant bite of food into her maw and shrugged.

We talked by the firelight deep into the night. How Luke and Jeremiah could even see where to bang a hammer was beyond me, but then again, it was growing obvious there were a lot of things they could do. I’d have to work on controlling my surprise.

Kristina told me stories of her days before the saloon—of her mother and odd jobs they’d worked in Chicago. I found it comforting to listen to her voice. She looked at life differently than anyone I’d ever met. Where a woman would be bent to breaking, Kristina found humor. Where a lesser woman would drown in sorrow, she found a positive light cast on every situation that had happened in her life. Her happiness was like medicine for my soul. How could I mourn my old life when she’d suffered worse and came out of it with a genuine smile? I’d do well to let her optimism infect me.

I told her of friends and grand parties and the dresses I’d worn, and she listened with the intensity of a child who was hearing about dragons and castles for the first time. If ever we went back to Boston, I’d like to go to a party with her. It would be an experience just watching everything through her eyes.

Somewhere in the wee hours of the night, I nodded off. I woke to the smell of man and pine and jostled gently as Jeremiah carried me through the woods that led to our crude camp.

“I didn’t say goodnight to Kristina,” I argued half-heartedly.

“She’s already asleep in the barn. You can tell her tomorrow.”

That defeated the purpose but I didn’t tell him that. As I scrambled for the furs inside the tent, Jeremiah snatched a folded towel and small leather bag from the corner.

“Where are you going?” I didn’t mean to sound hurt but still, it came out that way.

“I’m going for a swim.”

“A swim? But it’s freezing out here.”

“Woman, I’ve been working on that house for the better part of the day. I need a bath.” The jangle of his spurs was loud in the quiet of the night as he turned and paused. “You wanna come with me?”

He turned his head slowly, and in the moonlight on that cloudless night, I could see the expected answer in his eyes. He didn’t think I was brave enough, and that stirred within me an empowering stubbornness I hadn’t felt in years.

I’d show him. “Do you have soap?”