River to Cross, A (17 page)

“A no-fun evening, huh?” Gus said.

Jake shook his head. “I feel like I’m going downhill in a runaway wagon, and I’ve lost the brakes.”

Elizabeth kicked the sheet back. For the third night in a row, she couldn’t get to sleep for thinking of Jake Nelson. This night—like the last two nights—she turned and tossed in bed. Every time she closed her eyes, she could feel his hands on her. She’d forgotten how good it felt, just to be held.

Staring at the ceiling, she remembered the solid feel of him in her arms, how strong his mouth had been on hers, how sweet it was to be kissed again. He made her feel like a woman. A pretty woman.

With a sigh, she stood and turned up the gas lamp on the night table and checked the clock. Three in the morning and she was wide awake.

She padded down the hall. In the quiet house, even her footsteps seemed loud to her ears. On her way through the living room, she picked up the vase of roses, carried it into the kitchen, and set it on the table.

She opened the icebox and poured herself a glass of tea from a pitcher, tasted it, and carried it over to the table.

She got a spoon from the drawer and added more sugar. Chin propped in her hands, she smiled at the flowers and stroked a fragile red bud about to open. It had been years since anyone sent her flowers.

A happy lightness rose inside her. She liked the man who had sent the flowers. A lot. She’d laughed more with Jake Nelson tonight than she had all year. He wasn’t so serious with her as he was with the men. Instead, he’d teased and flirted with her, even danced with her.

And she had to admit: the attraction was mutual. The first time they’d kissed tonight had been like coming home after a long, long time away. Her reaction to him and his sweet, soft kiss surprised her.

In his arms, nothing else had mattered.

Absently she stirred her spoon in the tea, a small singing sound in the bottom of the glass. She licked the spoon and laid it aside, her thoughts crowding in on her.

For the first time since Carl died, she was interested in another man.

Uneasy, she rose from the chair and carried her glass to the sink, scolding herself. Common sense told her to stay away from him. Depending on where he was assigned and how many men he had under him, Rangers were gone much of the time. Though he wasn’t U.S. Army, he was close, perhaps worse. The sleeping soldiers in Mexico flitted across her mind. What he was trained to do, what he would train others to do at the fort, was chilling to her. Flowers and a few kisses wouldn’t change that.

Be sensible
. Like Carl, all soldiers were trained to fight the enemy.

On the way back to bed, she stopped in front of the dresser. A different light-haired man looked out from a silver-framed photograph, a handsome young lieutenant smiling at the camera three years ago.

She picked up the photograph and ran her fingers across the cool glass. Carl could never call her name again or kiss her again or make her feel as Jake had done tonight. She smiled at the photograph, at her husband’s frozen smile and unseeing eyes.

Hot tears welled. Standing by the dresser in the semidarkness of the room, she cried again for the loss of her Carl.

Their marriage had been too short. She’d had so much more love to give him than they were given time for. All her dreams of having his children and loving their grandchildren were lost, as well. And though a part of her would always love him, always belong to him, Carl was now a shadow, a memory.

It was time to move on.

“I’m so tired of being lonely,” she whispered to his picture.

She set the frame back on the dresser and worked her wedding ring off, then slipped it and the photograph into the top drawer. For several moments she looked down at them.

Carl was yesterday.

Jake was today. Perhaps tomorrow.

Gently she closed the drawer.

“Just a minute!”
Elizabeth wound a towel around her head and hurried to answer the doorbell. On her way, she glanced out the living room window.

A big-eared Army mule hitched to a green flatbed wagon was parked in front of the house.

She hesitated, then opened the door.

Jake stood on the porch, holding a paper bag from the bakery at Fort Bliss. He wore black trousers and a black shirt that clung like a second skin. And no riding boots.

“Am I late?” he asked innocently.

“You’re an hour early, and you know it.” She stepped aside and cinched the robe sash tighter around her waist.

She’d hardly slept last night and her nerves were raw.

An hour earlier, she’d awakened, feeling unsettled and more tired than when she went to bed. The cause of her sleeplessness filled her doorway—tanned, clean-shaven, and gorgeous—while she was wearing a ratty old robe she’d had since her school days.

“You’d like to kill me, right?”

“I’m seriously considering it,” she said.

“I was in a hurry . . . thinking about something else, I guess. The same thing I thought about all night.” He stepped inside and set the pastries on a table. “I was thinking about this.” Before she realized what he was doing, he had her in his arms. “Good morning, Elizabeth.” Thoroughly, he kissed her on the lips. “That’s to make up for the kiss on the forehead.”

Her stomach skittered. He was doing it again—so confident, so sure of himself—and she was falling apart inside. With an effort, she willed herself motionless, letting her arms hang limp at her sides. She refused to deal with him and her conflicting emotions at seven o’clock in the morning!

Finally he let go his embrace and stepped back from her. “Where’s Ruthie?” he asked.

“She’s with Colonel Gordon’s family today.” Then Elizabeth gave him what she hoped was a friendly smile, but not
too
friendly.

With an affectionate pat on her arm, Jake brushed past her and headed for the kitchen. “Now go finish getting dressed, and I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”

Fifteen minutes later, she came into the kitchen wearing a beige jersey skirt and a white blouse, an outfit she wore when working outside. She’d caught her hair back and fastened it with a tortoise clasp at the nape of her neck.

He turned from the stove, where he was whisking eggs. “Pretty. I like your hair loose like that.”

“What are you doing?” she asked, warmed by the remark.

“Making your breakfast. Any objections?”

Amazed, she watched the man who said all the right things tuck a dish towel around his waist. Minutes later, she had a lighter-than-air omelet on her plate. After the delicious breakfast, while sitting together and sipping coffee, she made out a list of things to take with them to the creek.

“We need to pack sandwiches for lunch and take something along to drink, unless you think we’ll be back by then,” she said.

“I doubt it. Let’s take something just in case.”

He had an intensity about him she could almost feel. She’d noticed that when he spoke to the Gypsy men. He seemed to know exactly what he was doing.

Apparently that self-assurance went along with being a Ranger. Carl had respected them because he knew what they trained for. Texas Rangers were the ones who responded first—sometimes the only ones. Many areas had no sheriff, no law enforcement at all except the Rangers. They were the law. Carl used to laugh and say he’d never met a Ranger he liked. If you see Rangers riding up the street, he said, better get inside, because something is about to happen.

“Fort Bliss is a Cavalry post,” she said. “What’s a Ranger officer doing on staff here?”

“I’m not on staff here,” Jake said. “No official connection between Rangers and the Army. We collaborate with each other whenever we need to. I’m ex-Cavalry and served under Colonel Gordon at one time. I loved the Cavalry and went into the Texas Rangers because the state of Texas needed my help. And like the Cavalry, I go where they send me.”

Her eyes fixed on him. “So did my husband. Of the seven months we were married, Carl was gone for four of them. The Army is your wife, your mistress, your everything.”

“I understand why you feel that way,” Jake said, “but I can’t agree with you.” He drained the last of his coffee and smiled. “The military is a career like any other. At least in the service, a man knows what he does counts for something besides dollars. You’re the daughter of a senator. More than most, you know that freedom comes with a price tag. And no matter how high it is, we’ll pay it.”

She shook her head. “Must be something in the water they give you. Now you sound like my father.”

He laughed and pulled her up from the table. “I’m going to need some canoe training today. Are you ready to teach me?”

He didn’t try to kiss her again, but instead treated her with a brotherly indifference, as if he’d put her in a little box in the back of his mind. Evidently he could turn his feelings on and off like a spigot. And he definitely didn’t want to talk about it.

On their way out the door, her eyes widened. Smiling, she broke into a run for the horse and green wagon parked in front of the house. “Where did you get that canoe? It’s beautiful!” she said.

Resting between the side rails was an old birchbark canoe and two paddles. Age had darkened the once-white bark of the canoe to a golden tan color.

“I’ve never seen one, but have only read about them. That’s a real Indian canoe—where did you get it?”

Jake looked pleased by her reaction. “One of the maintenance soldiers got it out of the shed for me. Says it’s been here for ten years. Someone, after a raid up north, hauled it back here. It’s used a couple of times a year to check the water level of Little Pine Creek. Most places, the creek is only a few feet deep. But where it empties into the Rio Grande, it gets quite deep. As close as the fort is to the Little Pine, flooding can be a problem.”

Elizabeth walked around the canoe, admiring the workmanship. “Lovely. It’s been well cared for. I’m guessing, but it looks to me like it may be Ojibwa.”

“Chippewa,” he said. “Same tribe, different pronunciation of their name. How do you know so much about canoes?”

“We belonged to a canoe club in Washington. Lloyd used to race other clubs on the Potomac. Two of my father’s friends raced, too. I was little and was so bored. But canoeing is all the rage now.” She climbed up onto the wagon seat and set their lunch on the floorboard. “Come on, let’s go. I can hardly wait! And remember, Ranger Jake—the fat end of the paddle goes in the water.”

The startled cry of a heron and the beat of rushing wings broke the stillness of the marsh. In the stern of the canoe, a mile or so south of Fort Bliss, Elizabeth stroked again with her paddle, synchronizing her movements with Jake’s, dipping the paddle in and out of the water in tandem with his. Sunlight poured through the cedars lining the banks of the Little Pine turning the water the color of molten bronze. Not far away, sandy shores littered with logs and upturned roots slipped past, the crumbling ruins of a bygone forest.

An hour earlier, she and Jake had unhitched the horse and left horse and wagon under a tree. Elizabeth carried the lunch and other gear, while Jake lifted the birchbark canoe over his head and walked it to the creek. It didn’t weigh more than forty pounds, he told her.

Now Elizabeth dragged her paddle in the water, slowing the canoe. Jake leaned over the bow and grabbed the limb of a dead cedar that had fallen across the stream. Together they worked the canoe beneath the overhanging trunk and coasted by in the shallows. Twice, the canoe scraped bottom.

Jake propelled a clump of floating brush aside with his paddle and grinned at her over his shoulder. “Back home, we’d call this little baby creek a
branch
.”

Alongside, the dark green of the pitch pines stood out in contrast to the silvery sandbanks rising above the water. Although they were hundreds of miles from the seashore, creamy white sand lay everywhere, a silent reminder that once upon a time these pine plains rested on the floor of the ocean.

“Glad you came?” she asked.

He nodded. Raising his body slightly, he swung his paddle to the other side and stroked hard
. The canoe slipped past a blackened stump submerged in creek water.

“Have to admit,” he said, “I wondered back there what you were letting me in for.” He dug at the water again.

The black shirt clung to his back, already damp. Behind him, Elizabeth admired the play of muscles in his shoulders and the powerful swell of biceps as he stroked. Watching him paddle, it occurred to her that nearly every Ranger she’d met had been fit and well muscled.

Once again, she found herself wishing he wasn’t in the Frontier Battalion.

“Let’s check that out.” She pointed to the mouth of another creek, which emptied into the Little Pine. They had the whole day to themselves, and she’d decided to let events unfold naturally. They paddled into the inlet, meandering up shallow channels heavy with the smell of wet pine forests. They all led nowhere except to more wild beauty and lonely bogs, a watery wilderness of yellow-scummed swamps and drowning trees.

The silence was profound, broken only by an occasional silver splash of water when a pickerel showed itself. Time and again, they swung the canoe around and paddled back to the Little Pine.

A shaft of sunlight broke through the trees and brushed his hair with fire. In one week, this man had shaken her world to pieces, made her question everything she’d thought and said about men in the last three years. All day she’d waited and watched for him to do or say something stupid, something that would turn her off. He never did.

He was smart and fun to be with—and he liked her, she could tell. She smiled to herself. Knowing that only made her like him more.

They saw few birds and almost no wildlife, except for a lone white-tailed doe at the water’s edge. Ears erect and alert, the deer raised its head and looked right at them. Then, slender legs lifting, it turned and bounded up the bank.

Resting her paddle, Elizabeth scanned their surroundings. “No houses, no people, no nothing.”

“Which is why some call it the ‘pine barren’ back here,” Jake said. “There are pine barrens and ponds like this from Florida all the way to Texas, running across the southern part of the country.”

He was easy to talk to. She found herself telling him things she didn’t usually tell people—about her father, about the mother she hardly remembered, about meeting her husband in Washington.

But Jake stiffened every time she mentioned Carl’s name.

“The day after you met him, he asked you to marry him, and you said yes? Why?”

Her chin lifted. “I fell in love the minute I saw him.”

Shaking his head, Jake replied, “There’s no such thing as love at first sight.” Then he jerked around and plunged his paddle into the creek again.

She frowned at his back, wondering what happened to his politeness, and what had happened in his life to make him feel this way.

Be careful
, she told herself. Up to now, he hadn’t so much as mentioned another woman’s name.

“Have you ever thought about getting married?” she asked quietly.

Jake tilted his head, but didn’t look around to meet her eyes. “Came close, once. Too close. Engaged for over a year. It didn’t work out.”