Heart of the West (85 page)
Authors: Penelope Williamson
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Romance, #Contemporary Women
She had poured coffee into her blue-and-white-patterned china. He held his cup cradled in his palms, blowing on it, his gaze caressing her face. "I love you," he said.
"Say it again."
"I love you, Clementine."
She felt shy of a sudden and she looked away. A bowl of her chokecherry jam, which they'd spread on her supper's biscuits, still sat on the table. She toyed with the spoon, making patterns in the thick pureed fruit.
"That first summer I was married," she said, making talk, delaying what was coming because the anticipation was so sweet, "I swear it was a pure mystery to me how berries could end up in jars to be spread on bread. Now I could put up a whole pantryful of preserves in my sleep."
"You remember the day you upturned a bucket of strawberries over Gus's head?" he said. "Lord, I don't know when I ever saw that brother of mine more surprised."
She pressed her fingers against her lips. "I don't know when I ever laughed so hard."
She looked up. His gaze was fastened hard on her mouth in that fierce, intense way of his. It made her lips soften and part and grow warm, as if he were already kissing her. But she saw a darkness in the shifting depths of his eyes, and a hurting. She didn't want this—there was no place for Gus between them anymore.
"He never knew," she said. "I'm certain he never knew. Oh, he always suspected there was a part of me he could never have. But he never knew it was the part of me that belonged to you."
His cup made a small clink in the quiet room as he set it down. He ran his finger along the rim of the saucer, his gaze still on her face. "There were times when I thought of him dying. I stopped short of wishing it, but I thought of it."
His words shocked her some. But the lawlessness in his nature that had always so fascinated her meant that not all of God's commandments were always going to be kept. And there was nothing he could ever say or do that would make her stop loving him.
His hand lay on the white oilcloth, dark, with long strong fingers that could swing a rope and break a horse. And love a woman. She closed the space between them and covered his hand with her own. "Come, my love," she said. "Come to bed."
He looked down at their entwined hands and then back up to her face, and he smiled.
They left the kitchen hand in hand like an old married couple. His boots made no sound on the striped stair carpeting. But when he took them off and dropped them by the bed, they made a soft creak and clunk, like settling wood in a beloved old house.
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