Her Colorado Man (4 page)

Louis spoke to Wes about his friend Otto, whom Wes had known over the years he delivered mail from the Juneau City station, so they shared the loss of a friend.

Eventually the children grew tired and sought out their parents, and a trio of women came to stand before Wes and Mariah.

“We prepared your room,” the one named Annika said. She was the same height as Mariah, but with much paler hair and a sprinkling of freckles. “Would you like me to help John James get ready for bed?”

Mariah stood quickly. “No, I can do it.”

John James looked up at Wes with a hopeful expression. “Will you tuck me in?”

Wes glanced from his cherubic face to Mariah’s barely disguised scowl. She gave a stiff nod that must have pained her.

“I will,” he replied.

“Give us ten minutes,” she said and took the boy’s hand. “Annika, please show Wesley the way.”

Her sister perched in the spot Mariah had vacated. “We’ve all been eager to meet Mariah’s husband. John James has been talking about your arrival for weeks.”

Wes smiled politely. “Pleasure to meet you, too, ma’am.”

“Did you find any gold?”

“A little here and there. I settled on a job that was as good as gold, and a sure thing.”

“As long as you survived the bears,” Dutch added from across the room.

“There was that,” Wes answered, and several of them laughed.

“Don’t crowd the man,” Louis said good-naturedly.

Eventually Annika got up to lead Wes through the foyer and up a wide set of curved stairs that opened into a comfortable open area with sofas, desks and shelves full of games and books.

“This is where the youngsters who live in the big house play and do their schoolwork,” she explained. “John James’s room is on the left down this hall.” She stopped and indicated an open door.

Wes thanked her with a nod and entered.

John James lay in a narrow bed with a thick flannel quilt folded down to the bottom. On the other side of the room, a sleepy-eyed Paul watched them from a similar bed.

Mariah, who’d been sitting beside her boy, stood and backed away from John James’s side, so Wes could approach.

“Hey, big fella,” Wes said to her son.

“Hey. How come you walk like that anyway?”

“Got my leg stuck in a bear trap last winter,” Wes told him. “It’s all but healed now.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” John James told him, his eyes solemn.

Wes’s chest got tight. “I’m glad, too.”

“I dreamed about you a hundred times.”

“You did?”

“Uh-huh. An’ you look just like I dreamed.”

“Did I walk like this in your dreams?”

“Don’t matter none to me.”

Uncertainty overcame Wes in a torrent. This was why he was here. This boy needed a father. But how would he know what to do? How would he show John James love and teach him all he needed to know to grow up to be confident and proud? He didn’t even know how to tell a child good-night. “Sleep well,” he said.

A moment of silence passed.

“Papa?”

He wouldn’t feel bad. He wouldn’t. “Yes?”

“Mama says I’m not too big for hugs.”

Wes’s throat constricted. This impressionable, fragile little person believed Wes was the father he’d been yearning for. Wes had set himself up for an unbelievably huge responsibility. It didn’t matter he’d never been on either end of a night like this. It didn’t matter he couldn’t find words. It didn’t matter where he’d come from or that he had no previous examples of fatherhood or family. All that mattered was making a difference in this child’s life…a difference for the better.

He perched on the edge of the bed. The instant he leaned forward, John James’s skinny arms shot out and closed around his neck.

The little boy smelled like clean sheets and castile soap. His hair was cool and soft against Wes’s cheek.

A hundred nights gazing at the aurora borealis couldn’t compare to the wonder of a child in his arms.

Wes had come home.

Behind her, her sisters and cousin sniffled, and Mariah turned to see them dabbing tears from their cheeks. She had tears in her eyes, too, but they were from biting her tongue so she wouldn’t scream at the intruder to clear the hell out of her son’s room and leave their home.

“Go to sleep now,” she said to John James.

“Papa, can you ride with me to school in the morning?”

Wesley tucked the covers around the boy’s shoulders. “I suppose that’d be okay.”

Mariah turned and headed out. Tucking in her son, walking him to school, letting her boy call him
Papa!
What was next?

Her sisters and Faye joined a row forming in the hallway. As she stepped into the hall, Mariah came face-to-face with the half dozen young women, all wearing expectant grins.

They appeared suspiciously happy about something, and she didn’t like it one bit.

“Your room is ready,” Faye said and took Wes’s arm to lead him forward to the opposite door.

Hold on, you’re taking him to my room!
Mariah thought in a panic.

Sylvia caught her hand and smiled into her face. “Mariah’s coming with us for a few minutes, Wes.”

As the youngest and still unmarried sister, Sylvia had a room of her own at the end of the hall near their parents.
She and Annika swept Mariah into the confines of that room and guided her behind the dressing screen where a pitcher of warm water, towels and fragrant soap awaited.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Mariah asked.

“Quickly now,” Annika said. “Don’t keep him waiting.”

“What is this all about?” she asked.

Annika didn’t wait, but came right behind the screen and turned Mariah away to unbutton her dress and push it to her hips. “We didn’t get to do all this when you were first married because you were in Chicago. So we’re doing it now.”

Faye spoke from the other side of the screen. “It’s easy enough to see that things are a little awkward between you two. We just want to give you a nudge in the right direction.”

“It’s natural to be nervous,” Annika told her. “Your husband’s been gone so long. But this is an exciting time, Mariah. Try to relax and enjoy his return.”

Annika wet a cloth and soaped it. Mariah took it from her and shooed both of her sisters to the other side of the screen. “None of this is necessary.”

They weren’t listening to her. Even her cousins had filed into the room, and now stood giggling and teasing. Trapped in her web of deception, Mariah washed and dried, then yelped when Sylvia spritzed her with cologne. Both her sisters dropped a voluminous silky sheer nightdress over her head and tied the ribbons.

Mariah looked down in mortification. “You can see right through this!”

Faye laughed. “That’s the idea!”

“Where did this come from?” Mariah asked.

“It’s a gift from us.” Annika tugged her forward and urged her to sit at Sylvia’s dressing table. Mariah crossed her hands over her breasts in embarrassment. “I need my wrapper.”

“You can’t wear that old thing tonight,” Annika told her.

In minutes, her hair was brushed, her cheeks powdered and Annika applied glycerin to her lips. Faye dropped a floral-patterned satin robe around her shoulders and Mariah gladly grabbed it and closed it around her.

They guided her along the hallway with the utmost giggling and shushing, finally pausing before her closed door.

“We’re so happy for you, Mariah,” Annika said in a throaty whisper. “Now get reacquainted with your husband.”

One of them rapped and opened the door. Several pairs of hands urged Mariah through the opening. At the very last second, the robe was lifted away and out.

Mariah stood inside her closed door wearing only the sheer nightdress and a look of horror.

A
n oil lamp glowed from the top of a bureau, and a welcoming fire burned in a brick fireplace. The four-poster bed had been turned down and pillows with white cotton cases piled and fluffed for comfort. Wes stood studying the room, pondering his predicament. The Spangler women believed he was Mariah’s husband…and as Mariah’s husband, he would naturally be expected to sleep in this room with her.

His gaze traveled again to the bed.
Sleep with her.
Requesting another room or heading for the stables would drag up uncomfortable questions.

Behind him the door opened. He turned at the same moment someone entered, a flash of fabric whisked outward, and the door closed with a firm click.

Six mugs of beer had gone to his head, because he could have sworn a naked woman had joined him in this
room. His mouth was suddenly so dry he wished he had another drink.

He should have turned away immediately, but not looking was impossible. She was real. Wes took in every lush curve and interesting hollow visible through the sheer white garment. He was a red-blooded, more-than-able-bodied man after all. And Mariah was incredibly beautiful.

She’d been frozen to the spot, but once she got her bearings and moved, she shot toward the bed, grabbed the coverlet and wrapped it around herself. It was too late. He had that creamy-skinned hourglass body and those lush dusky-tipped breasts seared on his brain for eternity. To what fortuitous hand of fate did he owe the privilege of meeting her son and seeing her naked all in the same day?

“I will never forgive them for this. Never!” She gathered the folds of the bedcover and dragged it behind a bamboo dressing screen with her. “You might have looked away,” she said from the other side.

“Might have,” he agreed.

Only then did he hear the soft laughter and the hushed giggles coming from the hallway.

“A gentleman would have,” she added.

“Might have,” he said again.

The rustling sound of fabric told him she was putting something on, a nightdress perhaps. A real nightdress.

“Forget that happened,” she begged.

Not if I live to be a hundred.
He said nothing. His presence here was lie enough.

She came out from hiding wearing a printed cotton wrapper that covered her all the way from her throat to her ankles. She draped the coverlet over the bed before going straight to a small table with three hinged mirrors, where she grabbed up a hairbrush. She made a few brisk strokes through her lustrous mane of fair, wavy hair before sectioning it off and braiding it. Her cheeks were still crimson with embarrassment—or anger. Both probably.

“First,” she said, coming to stand a safe few feet away from him. The thick braid fell over her shoulder and swayed against her breast. “I want to know what you’re doing here.”

“Didn’t your grandfather share my letter?”

“You want my son to have a father,” she stated.

“It’s more than that. I don’t know that I can explain it to you.”

“Try.” With her hands on her hips, she pursed her glistening lips and waited, her body held stiff. Her flowery, feminine scent played havoc with his restraint. He knew what was beneath that dressing gown.

He took a deep breath and exhaled. He deserved her suspicion, of course. She didn’t know him. “Can we sit down? I’ve traveled a far piece on foot today.”

Her accusing gaze faltered, and she frowned as though she regretted having to change her opinion of him from an ogre to a human being. “Yes, of course. Take the chair there by the fire.”

With his ankle and calf throbbing, he made his way
over to the chair and sat. It took him a couple of minutes to get his boots and socks off.

She appeared to wrestle with herself for a moment, but then darted forward. “Will it help to raise it?” she asked. She dragged a small trunk within reach and placed a needlepoint pillow atop it. “Rest your foot.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” Though he didn’t take a shine to showing his weakness, he had no choice but to use both hands to lift his leg and set his foot atop the pillow.

She leaned over to adjust the cushion, and her braid fell against his bare ankle. She straightened, glanced away and then back. “A bear trap?” she asked.

“Can’t see ’em in the snow,” he answered. “That’s the idea, of course, but this one was set along a trail.

“Passed out a couple of times before I got the rusty contraption off. Used my first-aid supplies to clean and bandage it, but I lost a lot of blood. Would’ve died if a band of Haida hadn’t found me. They doctored my leg and took me on to Juneau City ’cause they saw the mail bags.”

“What’s a Haida?”

“A native tribe that mostly hunts whales and fish along the coast, but some travel inland. Lucky for me these did. Anyway, infection traveled up my leg, and I was in a bad way for months.”

Mariah perched on the foot of the bed, then curled her feet up under her wrapper to lean against one of the posts on the footboard as she listened.

“When I came around, the new station man said my box was full and brought me the stack. All letters from
your boy,” he said. “Letters addressed to me. I shared a room right there at the station when I was in the city, so that’s where I spent the next few months, laid up and reading letters. Couldn’t figure out why this young fella was writing to me like he knew me, like I was somebody special.”

Mariah’s gaze shifted to the hem of her sleeve and she smoothed a finger over it without speaking.

“It probably doesn’t make much sense to you or to anybody…I’m kind of confused by it myself—but those letters were a connection for me. Something to hang on to. Something to look forward to and see me through another day. I searched old Otto’s room and found the rest, along with several from Louis. Eventually I wrote back to your grandfather.”

Mariah looked up and sighed. “And he told you it wouldn’t hurt if you picked up where Otto left off.”

“That’s the gist of it, yes.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t disagree with him. I never did. I just let him create this whole fantasy and played right along with it because it was convenient.”

Wes heard the concern in her voice. Her next words proved it.

“What are you going to do with this information now?”

He appreciated her freshly scrubbed face, shiny hair and pink lips. She was the prettiest woman he’d laid eyes on in a month of Sundays. “What do you mean, ma’am?”

“We used your name and your mailbox, and it was wrong of us. Have you told anyone?”

“No, of course not. I don’t care that you used my mailbox. Or my name for that matter. As it turned out John James’s letters might have saved my life.” He’d been alone for so long, that those letters had been a life connection for him. “That probably sounds a little dramatic, but it’s not much of an exaggeration.”

“What do you want from him? From me?”

“I don’t want anything, Mariah. I want to give something to him. I want to make a difference.”

She slid her feet to the floor to stand again, and he noted they were slender and bare.
Like the rest of her beneath that plain cotton dressing gown.

“What does that mean exactly?” she asked. “How do you plan to make a difference? How is playing out this lie going to do anything except make things worse?”

“How will I make it worse?”

“By disappointing him,” she said hastily and then lowered her voice. “By lying to him.”

“You’re
already lying to him. I’m making it real. I’m bringing him the father he wants.”

She pressed her palm to her forehead and closed her eyes for a moment before raising her head to glare at him. “How dare you presume? You are not real. And you are not the father he wants. I don’t even
know
you!” She caught herself raising her voice again and lowered it to say,
“He
doesn’t know you.”

“I’m here to fix that.”

She stepped closer. “To what end, Mr. Burrows? How do you plan to step into the imaginary role of his
father and not disappoint him? Someday he’s going to learn the truth.”

“How?”

She stared at him.

“How will he learn the truth? According to you, only three of us in the entire world know. Is that a fact?”

“It is.”

“Nobody else?”

“No one.”

“Do you think your grandfather will tell him?”

“Of course not.”

“I haven’t pried into your business, but now that you’ve brought it up, what
is
the truth? Is his real father going to show up?”

She looked away. “No.”

“Then how will he find out? Do you plan to enlighten him when he’s older?”

The lantern light picked up the sheen of tears in her eyes. “Why are you really here?” she asked. “What do you want from us?”

She blinked and turned her back to him, gripping the bedpost so tightly, her knuckles turned white.

It didn’t matter how much his leg complained, Wes had to get up and go to her. Her feelings were justified. Her fears were real. He stood behind her, close enough to detect the trembling in her body. He reached out to place his hand on her shoulder and reassure her of his intent.

The moment his fingers touched her wrapper, she flinched and spun to face him, her eyes wide with mistrust.

“I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

She raised her chin a notch. “I’m not afraid of you.”

She was a lovely creature, with skin as pale and satiny-looking as fresh cream. Her vivid blue eyes conveyed her wariness, wounding him unexplainably. He didn’t want to hurt her or the boy. How could he make her understand?

He took a few steps back.

“You haven’t thought this out,” she said. “You want to be a part of my son’s life, but what about me? What if I don’t want you in my life?”

“Look, I know there’s a lot to think about, a lot we have to talk about. But be honest. Don’t you think it would be best for him to have a father?”

Her exasperation was plain in the way she opened her mouth but said nothing, as though she didn’t even have a reply.

“You’ll leave,” she said finally, and he thought the words must have hurt the way she hesitated over them. “One day you’ll tire of the charade and move on. And what will happen to him then?”

“I don’t have any intention of leaving.” His voice was soft, but filled with rigid determination. “Not now and not later. I’ve come to stay. For good.”

Mariah wanted to throw something at him. The man was presumptuous and delusional and…
oh my goodness,
but he smelled incredible. Like a warm night breeze in the mountains.

There was no escaping the effect he had on her. When he lowered his voice and spoke so intently, goose bumps raised along her skin. He didn’t have to touch her for her to know how disturbingly close he stood. From the beginning, she’d sensed every time he looked at her, knew the moment he moved closer. What was she going to do about him?

“What are you doing to us?” she asked, hating that a fat tear escaped her rigid composure and slid down her cheek.

“I understand that you don’t trust me.” He spoke so calmly that it angered her all the more. He was calm, rational…unless one actually listened to the foolish words he spouted. “You haven’t had time to learn I can be trusted,” he added.

“You’re crazy.” She scrambled away from him to the opposite side of the bed where she folded down the sheet.

“Do you want me to go somewhere else?”

She confronted him across the mattress. “Where? Where would you go that my family wouldn’t see you and question why I’d kicked my newly returned husband from my room?”

“I don’t know. I could—”

“No, you’ve butted your way in here and made everybody like you. Everyone thinks you’re—you’re—who you say you are.”

“I am who I said I am. I’m Wes Burrows.”

“But you’re not my husband.”

“I never said I was, ma’am. You did.”

“Oh!” She picked up a pillow and threw it at him. He caught it easily. Then she bunched up the coverlet she’d held around her earlier and tossed it toward him. “Sleep on the window seat. Or the floor. I don’t care where. I have to get up early in the morning.”

“Should we compare stories?” he asked. “So I don’t make any mistakes?”

She reached for the lamp that sat on a table at the side of the bed. “Be gone from this room by the time I wake in the morning.” She turned down the wick, plunging the room into darkness. “When we’re alone, you stay as far away from me as possible.”

A satisfying thump like that of his knee or foot hitting wood was followed by a barely audible groan. She climbed into the bed and pulled the sheet up over her head.

This had been the worst night of her life.

That hasty thought unleashed a torrent of chilling memories—the night before Hildy’s wedding, a night she tried never to think of. Tonight had been far from the worst night of her life. But it rated right up there.

She hugged her pillow, curled up in a ball and used every ounce of her grit not to wail like a baby. She had to keep her wits about her and her chin held high. Her troubles had only just begun.

Wes had slept in a lot worse places. A plush rug in a warm room with a snapping fire was no hardship compared to a smelly fishing ship being tossed on the
sea or subzero winter nights in a tent. He woke at first light and crept from the house.

Yuri met him when he exited the back door. If the twigs in his fur were any indication, the dog had been hunting. Wes sat on the step to pet the animal and pick out sticks and leaves. Yuri licked his stubbled chin.

So maybe he hadn’t thought this move all the way through. He’d considered the part about being a father to a fatherless boy, but he hadn’t thought about being a husband to a woman who wanted no part of him.

After several minutes, Wes found a pump and basin in an outbuilding behind the house, where he washed and shaved.

He was just finishing up when Mariah’s cousin Marc entered. He lit the old stove and set a kettle of water on top. “First one out starts a fire,” Marc told him.

“Guess I forgot about hot water,” Wes answered. “I was tickled there was no ice on top of the barrel. I’ll remember tomorrow.” Yuri, who’d waited outside the wash building, followed him back to the house.