Liz Ireland (16 page)

A throat cleared, nearly causing her to jump out of her skin. She turned and found Lang staring at her. She must have been very distracted not to hear his approach. For days it seemed she’d been unable to stop monitoring his every movement. Now she took in his muscular frame leaning against the porch railing and felt a shiver work through her. All her life she’d listened to preachers railing about the temptations of the flesh, but she’d never had a clue what they were talking about until Lang Tupper had kissed her. Now every time she looked at the man those remembered sermons were drowned out by a pure flood of temptation.

“I hope you’re not tired,” he said, seemingly oblivious to the knee-weakening effect he had on her. “There’s plenty more to do by sundown.”

“I’m just standing here being sentimental. Rose Ellen set me off.” His brows shot up in surprise, which made her laugh. “And I’ve got energy to spare for work. Now that we’ve started, I feel elated, Lang. I think I might like farming better than nursing!”

He chuckled. “You’ll have to do a lot of nursing in farming. There’s plenty of patching and mending involved.”

His dark eyes sparkled at her, making her insides go liquid and hot. Sometimes just looking at him, she felt as if she might turn limp and boneless, like a dumpling, even when he was talking about seemingly innocuous subjects like patching roofs and how often to rest the mules. Especially then. Talking over domestic subjects with Lang brought a fierce longing within her, making her yearn for
what she knew now could never be—herself and Lang, working side by side, forever.

Tears stung at her eyes, but she couldn’t let him see them.

“If you do start the hospital—”

She interrupted him. “I will.”

“When you do, you’ll be doing two demanding jobs. You realize that, don’t you?”

She nodded. “I realize it.”

“You’ll need help.”

She looked at him, feeling a hitch in her heart, but his eyes didn’t reveal the meaning she hoped to see in them. She needed help; yet he was still going to leave her. Her heart railed against the unfairness of it. “Do you have any suggestions?”

“William’s a better worker than I thought he’d be. He catches on fast. If I were you, I’d keep him and Lorna on here. That way I’d…” His eyes darkened and he looked down at the pine planks of the porch floor.

“You’d what?” Without meaning to, she stepped toward him, magnetized by hope and desire. He would stay? That couldn’t be. He would…what?

He shook his head. “Well, you’d be less lonely. I wouldn’t worry about you so much.”

She might have been encouraged by the fact that he would think of her at all, but she wasn’t. She might even have laughed at the idea of yet another person worrying about her being lonely, yet she couldn’t. Lonely. Just that word struck a cold note in her heart. “I have a feeling I really don’t know the meaning of loneliness yet.” She would when Lang rode out.

He touched her chin with his knuckles, tilting it up. His eyes were full of unspoken emotion, but her gaze focused on his lips, warm and full. If she’d thought it would work,
she would have kissed him, begged him to stay, offered him anything. She’d always heard about scarlet women who used their bodies to bring men to heel and bend them to their will. And for a moment she considered making Lang such a lurid proposition. Lord knows, it wouldn’t entail doing anything she hadn’t dreamed about every night now.

Trouble was, she doubted it would work. And maybe she didn’t want it to. Her heart was breaking, but Lang’s life was on the line. His argument that the longer he stayed the more danger he was in had a ring of truth to it. Given the choice between Lang’s life and her own happiness, she knew which she’d pick. Or did she?

“Emma?” he asked. “Is something wrong?”

She smiled. “Yes—I’m going crazy as a bedbug. One minute I think you’re right and that you should ride out of here as soon as possible, and the next I’m dreaming up ways to entice you to stay.”

“Like how?”

She leaned back against the railing. “Well, that’s difficult. You’ve already got the best room in the house, and my cooking is lucky to draw flies.”

Lang chuckled.

She shrugged. “It doesn’t leave much else…besides myself.”

He stilled, and his smile disappeared.

She rushed on. “Sometimes at night I think about going into your room and offering my…favors…for you to stay. But I always lose my nerve.” She laughed. “I’m not sure how persuasive a tactic it would be, anyway.”

Lang wasn’t laughing. When he spoke, his voice came out a rasp. “Very.” He reached forward and took her in his arms, his intense gaze melting the humorous facade she’d been hiding behind.

Emma closed her eyes as Lang bent forward, and for an aching eternity she held her breath…until she felt the warmth of his lips sweep across hers. It was just a brush of skin against skin, the slightest whisper of a kiss, but there was nothing slight about her reaction. Her skin was on fire; her blood heated to a deep molten core that until Lang she hadn’t known existed within her. And when he pulled away from her, her heart, which for a fleeting moment had been so full, deflated suddenly until it was just an aching pebble-sized lump in her breast.

He looked away, his expression hooded.

Emma closed her eyes once more and didn’t move, remaining only inches from him. They were so close, she could feel the warmth of his body, and if she closed her eyes, she would be able to imagine that he was still about to reach out to her and kiss her again, longer this time. She could dream that he would never let her go.

The scrape of his boot as he stepped away made her open her eyes. “Lang—”

“You’ve got company, Emma,” he said, cutting her off.

She whirled and glanced down the road, expecting to find a horse in the distance. Instead, she saw Barton Sealy about twenty yards away. Emma froze.

“Folks are always sneaking up on us,” Lang drawled.

Before she could put her thoughts into any kind of rational order, the front door slammed and Lang had disappeared. Emma remained rooted where she was, unable to step forward to greet her unwanted guest. Lang and the intervening days had put all thought of Barton’s betrayal out of her head, but seeing his handsome face and glib smile again brought it back to her. She stiffened with resentment.

The sheriff dismounted and doffed his hat. “Howdy, Emma,” he said, grinning from ear to ear.

And why wouldn’t he be grinning? The last time he’d seen her, he’d kissed her once and she’d nearly fallen over herself with gratefulness. The memory made her slightly nauseated. How happy it would have made her to tell him that she’d as soon kiss a wooden statue as him again.

“How are you, Sheriff?”

Her use of his title instead of his name caused him to blink. “I was expectin’ to see you before now, to tell you the truth. I thought you’d come to town to see me.”

“I went to town, but I didn’t have time to drop by the jail. Since then, I’ve been busy.”

“Oh.” He looked nonplussed, then shrugged. “Well, but of course you’ll be taking tomorrow off. For the church picnic.”

She shrugged. “Yes, I suppose so. Lorna and William have offered to take me.”

Barton’s eyes narrowed at the mention of his brother in conjunction with Lorna, but he gritted out a smile. “Now, why would you want to go with them, when I’d be happy to pick you up and take you there myself?”

Emma grinned back. “How kind of you! But I wouldn’t want to put you out.”

“It would be no trouble.”

“Oh, yes, it would. Far too much trouble,” Emma insisted. “I wouldn’t dream of going with you.”

“But I want to—”

“No, absolutely not.”

His smile faded. “See here, Emma. What’s going on?”

Emma smiled pleasantly. “We’ve been very busy here. The farm is coming along nicely, and William has been such a help.”

“I didn’t mean with the farm,” Barton said. “I mean…between us.”

Emma’s eyes widened. “Why? Was there something between us?” she asked, blinking. “Did I miss it?”

He slapped his hat against his thigh. “Gol-dang it, Emma. You haven’t forgotten that I kissed you.”

She let out a breathy sigh of understanding. “Oh, that!” She laughed. “No, I haven’t forgotten.”

“Well, then…”

She put a hand on his sleeve and assured him, “I still think it would be best if I went with Lorna and William, don’t you? We wouldn’t want people linking our names together.”

She nearly laughed at his pop-eyed confusion. It apparently had never entered his head that she might not want his company. “But—”

“People are such gossips,” she interrupted. “Always trying to make out a romance where one couldn’t possibly exist!”

His lips turned down in a grim line. “I see.” His eyes narrowed, and he stared at the screen door for a moment. “Was that your boarder I saw you with just now?”

Emma continued to stare evenly at him, hoping that she kept the wariness out of her expression. “Mr. Archibald? Yes, I believe it was.”

“He seemed a handsome fellow.”

“He’s an invalid,” Emma offered, her mind frozen. Why was the sheriff looking at her suspiciously?

“A young invalid, I’d say. Has he seen some sort of trouble?”

Emma thought she might faint. “An accident…several years ago.”

His frown deepened, and she detected more than a little skepticism, too. “Maybe I ought to have a talk with this man. You can’t trust everyone nowadays, you know. And there have been some bad characters prowling about
lately.”
Like the outlaw Lang Tupper
, his gaze seemed to say.

But surely she was just being overly fearful. There was no reason for him to put Mr. Archibald and Lang Tupper together…unless he got a better look at him than he possibly could have from that distance. She just had to make certain he didn’t get another look at Lang at all.

“Mr. Archibald has been unfailingly polite and very helpful. He helped plant my kitchen garden this week.”

“Did he, now?” the sheriff asked, his voice far from interested. He looked off to the side pasture, where Lorna and William were talking by the fence, and frowned. “I think I’ll have a word with my brother.” He smashed his hat back on his head. “Good day, Emma.”

“Sheriff.”

Her heart was beating like a rabbit’s as she watched him stomp over to William and Lorna. Naturally, Lorna fled soon after the hellos, but the two men talked long enough to exchange what appeared to be angry words, although she was too far away to hear. Then the sheriff mounted his horse, flicked an annoyed gaze at Emma and rode off.

Fear squeezed her chest. Maybe she should have just gone to the picnic with the sheriff. By not doing so, she may have picked up an unfortunate enemy.

She turned, ran through the front door and up the stairs. When she reached Lang’s room, he was sitting in the chair she usually took, apparently waiting for her. Her expression must have told him all he needed to know about her frantic state of mind. “That was the sheriff!”

His lips twitched. “So I heard. You were wonderful, Emma.”

“I shouldn’t have antagonized him!” she exclaimed, pacing anxiously. “What are we going to do?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing!” she repeated. “He saw you. I think he suspects—” She cut off her words, unable to speak the dreaded words.

“We’ll sit tight until tomorrow. Till the picnic.”

She nodded, willing herself to be calm like Lang. “The picnic.” She frowned. “Then what?”

He swallowed. “Then, while you and everyone else are occupied with stuffing yourselves and dancing, I’ll sneak out.”

“Sneak out,” she repeated, feeling suddenly numb inside.

“That way, no one around here will see me.”

Emma’s insides suddenly felt like a lump of iron. She sank against his door, cold and shaky. Lang sounded so calm; he’d thought this all through, and now he was prepared to follow what was certainly a rational course of action. She’d known this moment was coming, but she wasn’t ready, and she couldn’t be calm. “Tomorrow is so soon!” she exclaimed. “Too soon!”

“But it’s ideal. Half the county will be there. I’ll be able to head out with little chance of being noticed for a good long while.”

“But what about the planting?” she said, when she really just wanted to cry
what about me?
Or
what about us?

But of course there was no
them
. Lang had made sure of that. If only he could have ensured that she wouldn’t fall in love with him. Because that’s what had happened, she realized now. After twenty-eight years of being wise and careful and responsible, and shaking her head over what fools women made of themselves, she’d gone and fallen in love with Lang Tupper, the worst possible choice she could have made. To say the man was without prospects was laughable. He was very possibly without a future at all.

But she loved him. Loved him the way she’d never expected to love a man since she was a silly sixteen-year-old—with every fiber of her being. Every moment of the day she thought of him; she went to bed at night dreaming of how it felt to be held in his arms; she could have written several volumes of sonnets about his handsome face, his deep voice, his uneven but still graceful walk. His kindness toward her would easily have filled a volume all itself. She’d been a different person entirely since she’d met him, a better person. He’d changed her life.

And now he was simply going to leave?

She tried to visualize tomorrow, and their parting. The terrible thing, she realized, was that she would have to leave first. It wouldn’t simply be a matter of standing on the porch and waving at him till he disappeared. She would have to tear herself away from him to go to a silly dance that would be worse than torture for her.

“I can’t do it!” she said, pushing herself away from the door.

Lang stood. “Yes, you can. William will help you.”

William? She managed to focus her confused gaze on him, then understood. He thought she was still talking about the planting, when her mind had sped right past that issue. Lang was more important to her than her farm.

“Emma,” he said gently, “we both knew this was going to happen.”

She shook her head. “But so soon?”