Читать книгу Rebel Outlaw - Carol Arens - Страница 11

Chapter Two

“I should have let the butcher keep you,” Holly Jane grumbled at the pig, who grunted at a weed growing near the back door of The Sweet Treat. “You’d have made a fine sandwich.”

She locked the door then glanced about. So far, not a single suitor was visible on the path through the woods that led home.

That, at least, was a blessing. With the sun dipping behind the treetops, she didn’t need another delay. She would be late getting back to the ranch as it was.

What with broken china scattered about and chocolate-tea goop to be scrubbed from the floor, it was well past the time that she liked to be home.

“You, Miss Pigling, will help me feed the chickens since they’ll be cackling up a storm by time we get to the barn.”

Holly Jane walked the path toward home taking deep breaths of autumn-scented air. Late-afternoon sunshine shot through tree branches and cast long shadows behind her and Lulu. Leaves twisted in the breeze, looking like molten gold and then red sparks.

She loved her life here. When she had discovered, at the reading of his will, that Granddaddy had sold her inheritance, she had cried for a week. Between missing the man who had been everything to her and wondering how she would get by without the ranch she had planted her roots in, she thought she might never quit weeping.

Overhead, a crow cawed, flapping its wings toward the west and the coming sunset.

Given a choice, Holly Jane would be snuggled in a cozy chair beside the fireplace when darkness came. Since she didn’t have the choice, she would make another one. She would enjoy the beauty of the evening as it faded from light to dusk then full dark.

Coming out of the woods just now, she watched the sun slip behind the trees growing on the western edge of the ranch. The great orange glow peeked between a line of cedar and cottonwood, with elm and maple tossed in.

It would be dark by the time she reached the house, but a fat full moon rose behind her to light the way. Stars began to blink and twinkle. A raccoon rustled out of the brush and waddled up to Lulu.

“Good evening, Mayberry.”

Lulu oinked and the pair of them toddled behind Holly Jane toward the ranch house...the home she couldn’t even think of leaving.

Blame it, she wouldn’t leave. She had vowed that, to herself if to no one else.

Grandfather, in his wisdom...or confusion...hadn’t sold the entire ranch to the stranger. He had left her a perfect circle of land a hundred yards in diameter and only a short distance from the house.

Smack in the middle of the circle of land was her carousel, the gift Granddaddy had given her when she was five years old.

Why hadn’t he left her the house, as well? What could it have hurt to do that? These questions had plagued her like hounds on a scent.

Her grandfather had meant well, the lawyer had explained that day when her tears wouldn’t stop. Granddaddy’s intention had been to keep her from falling prey to the Folsoms and the Broadhowers, who would do anything to get the Munroe land.

“The new owner has agreed to watch over you, Holly Jane,” the lawyer had explained. “Your granddaddy only wanted to keep you safe.”

Holly Jane stepped onto the bridge that crossed the narrow river that Granddaddy had named Neighborly Creek. She sighed so deep that it must have alarmed Mayberry. The racoon stood on her back legs with her paws scratching the air.

“Can’t think of what got into Granddaddy. I don’t need a stranger looking after me. Haven’t I been watching after him and me since Grandma passed?”

Lulu oinked then trotted over the bridge. Holly Jane hurried after her. The chickens were probably pecking each other by now.

Two hours later, Holly Jane sat down on an overstuffed chair beside the fireplace with a cup of hot cocoa warming her palms.

The house looked like it had been shaken about in a jug then the contents dropped like gambling dice to lie where they landed.

Until Granddaddy’s passing, she had kept these rooms swept and in order. She’d put flowers in vases on the dining room table. She’d let fresh air waft in through open widows, carrying the scent of summer blossoms through the house.

But summer was gone and so was Granddaddy. And the stranger was on his way. As much as it hurt to turn the house she loved into a tumbleweed, she did not want the new owner to see it at its best. If she could prevent him from falling in love with the place, it would be easier for him to sell it back to her.

After a while, she couldn’t bear the unkempt look of the rooms so she went outside.

Her carousel glowed dully in the moonlight. She hugged her robe around her white nightgown, went down the steps and walked over newly deeded Travers land to her own inherited circle.

She stepped upon the carousel platform. It creaked, showing its age. She ran her hand over the peeling red paint of a horse’s rump.

There had been a day when the carousel still worked—before the steam engine that powered it quit—that she would ride for hours on end. Even the children from town would come to the ranch on Sunday afternoons. As hard as it was to believe, for those hours, the Folsom children and the Broadhower children forgot the feud between their parents and played peacefully together.

Holly Jane climbed onto the back of her favorite wooden horse. She glanced at the sky. An owl beat silently against the dark, its pale wings bright against the canopy of stars. It screeched and a mouse exploring the platform dashed between the boards to safety.

Years had gone by since those days; the carousel had broken and faded. The children had grown up to hate each other.

“I understand why you sold the ranch, Granddaddy,” she whispered to miles of shadowed land, quiet except for the scurrying night creatures.

And she forgave him. She only hoped that from wherever he was, he could see that she had avoided becoming a Mrs. to a Broadhower or a Folsom and she’d done it all on her own.

When she did become a Mrs., it would be because she was madly and completely head over heels in love with some handsome man who was brave, tender and devoted all at once.

To her knowledge, that man did not exist in Friendship Springs. From what she had seen of men, he might not exist at all.

Holly Jane gripped the carousel pole and leaned her cheek against it.

Then again, he may have passed through this afternoon, and thanks to Lulu, seen her at her very worst. She had cursed, blame it, right in front of him and the old ladies.

Oh well, chances are he was only passing through. But he was handsome...so handsome that it was hard to put him out of her mind.

He had sandy, brown-blond hair that grew past the collar of his flannel shirt and the shadow of a beard. It could be that he might have forgotten to shave...or maybe he was beginning to grow it out.

A body wouldn’t think she’d had time to notice his eyes, but lordy, they were blue and they flickered mischief. She didn’t know him well enough...she didn’t know him at all, really...to know this to be true, but she’d lay a bet on it.

And honestly, the pair of dimples flashing in his stubble-roughened cheeks when he had handed her Lulu and called her bacon had nearly made her fall again.

As far as handsome went in her requirement of a husband, the stranger was all that and more.

Still, there was brave, tender and devoted to be considered. Chances are he was devoted, having taken his valuable time to bring a pair of old women to tea.

Whether he would be brave and tender in a marriage, she had no way of knowing. He might be married already. She ought to quit daydreaming and recognize that.

And aside from everything else, there was one more quality she would require of a mate. He would have to be a good kisser. Over the years she had imagined kisses of all kinds. Tender, wild, demanding and sweet as sugar.

There was one thing she did know about the stranger. Fate would never give her the opportunity to discover what mysteries those expressive lips might hold.

* * *

It was nearly dawn and Holly Jane hadn’t managed to capture a wink of sleep. There was something wrong with her bed and she knew just what it was.

It was no longer her bed. After years of snuggling into its downy sweetness, it was now the property of one Colt Travers. Every feather of her mattress and each neatly fluffed bow on her quilt belonged to him.

She threw back the covers and sat up. She set her bare feet on the cool floorboards and shivered for a moment.

“Get off my robe, Lulu.” She poked the pig with her toe, then picked up her robe and put it on.

Thoughts of a stranger coming into her home were unsettling. He’d walk about the rooms that she loved without knowing that Grandma had set pies in the kitchen window to cool, that Granddaddy smoked a pipe while he sat on the step of the front porch. He wouldn’t know that her mama walked out the front door with a sideshow barker while Holly Jane slept upstairs and that she had never come back. He wouldn’t know that the photo on the mantel was of her father and that he had died in a fire before she was born.

To Holly Jane, the stranger would feel the same as a thief. He’d invade her home and take everything familiar. He’d replace it with his own belongings and leave her bereft.

Colt Travers would do that, if she let him.

“Come on, Lulu, wouldn’t you like to nibble something in the parlor?”

The rooster crowed in the barn. Soon another day would begin and there was still no sign of the new owner. No doubt he was taking his own good time, not caring that her stomach ached with the suspense of waiting for the unknown.

She gathered courage coming down the stairs, by reminding herself that she wasn’t helpless. She had her weapons, although she hated to use them.

Her first stop was the dining room. A vase of dried-out flowers sat in the middle of the table. She tipped them over, broke a brittle stem and then wiped up a smear of water with the hem of her robe. She didn’t want to do permanent damage to the table. It would be hers again one day if the new owner didn’t sell it and put something repulsive in its place.

She ripped a cushion on the divan that was worn and needed replacing anyway. She scattered a handful of stuffing about the floor, which delighted Lulu to no end. The petite pig snorted at it and pushed it about with her snout.

After half an hour, the ruination of the house was satisfactory and she became weary. Just one more thing would make it a work of art.

“Come along, Lulu,” she called and walked into the kitchen.

She picked up a cookie from a plate that she had left on the table more than a week ago. It had aged to dry, crumbly perfection.

Holly Jane closed her fist about it and scattered crumbs of cinnamon and nutmeg over the table. She sprinkled some on the floor. The crumbs on the floor didn’t last because of Lulu.

Next, she went to the pantry and took out a bag of flour.

“All right, Lulu, give it your best.” She scattered the flour on the countertop and the stove. Then she tossed a handful in the air and let it land where it would.

“Almost perfect,” she muttered then dumped the rest of the bag on the floor.

Lulu squealed then rolled in it. She was a strange little creature. Most pigs enjoyed a roll in the mud. Not so her little friend—she liked wearing pretty bows in her ear and eating sweets.

“Go on now,” she said to the pig. “Trot about the house. Leave prints wherever you can.”

Lulu squinted small piggy eyes at her and lifted her flour-smeared snout.

“I won’t get angry. I promise.”

Lulu paddled into the parlor, happily grunting.

At last, fatigue weighted every muscle of Holly Jane’s body. She climbed the staircase toward the bed that used to be hers, thankful that this was Sunday. The Sweet Treat would be closed, and she would be able to sleep past sunup.

She fell into bed with flour caking her toes, smudging her nose and frosting her hair, but she was too weary to worry about it. She might sleep through Lulu’s demand for breakfast, and the little pig could be as persistent as an itch.

* * *

“Did you remember the parasol, Colt?” Grannie Rose asked while Colt lifted her onto the wagon seat. “And my blue satin dancing slippers?”

“Tucked away between your bloomers and your new straw bonnet.” At least the parasol was. The dancing slippers had gone to dust thirty years before.

Colt climbed up and settled between his grannie and his great-aunt. He felt the solid weight of the bench beneath him and inhaled the scent of new lumber.

He’d purchased the spanking new wagon after the old ladies had been tucked into the hotel, each with a glass of wine.

Excitement over seeing his new spread had kept him awake all night, so he’d risen before dawn to load the few belongings that had come with them from the Broken Brand and the trinkets that the ladies had taken a fancy to along the way.

They wouldn’t need much in the way of home goods since the ranch house had come with all the furnishings. He’d buy everything new for the barn, though. He meant to pamper the horses he would be breeding like they were kin...maybe not his own, but someone’s.

Ever since he’d been a kid he’d dreamed of having land where the strong beautiful creatures would run and frolic. Horses weren’t like cattle that were raised for the slaughterhouse. His animals would go for farming, pulling buggies, or the high-spirited ones might even go for racing.

Horses might have been what convinced William Munroe to sell him the land. He’d said that his granddaughter would be knee-deep in pleasure over it.

Evidently, Holly Jane had some sort of kinship with critters.

“Let’s get going, Colt,” Aunt Tillie said, nudging him in the ribs. “Woolgathering won’t get us to our new home.”

“Poor little Holly Jane must be frightened out there all by herself,” Grannie Rose said.

“She ain’t little, Grannie.” For some reason, Grannie thought Holly Jane was a child, even though he’d told her that she wasn’t, time and again. “She’s a spinster lady.”

“Is she?” Grannie frowned then brightened. “She ought to get on fine with Tillie, then.”

He hoped so. The care of three females, one not related, might be a challenge. He couldn’t imagine that the spinster would be grateful to see him, even though he was there to stand between her and the fool, feuding families.

The ride from town to the ranch was short. Only fifteen minutes by wagon...five, he figured, on horseback.

While the old ladies chatted, he watched the scenery pass and thought of William Munroe.

It had been nothing short of Providence, the pair of them meeting and becoming friends in so short a time.

The old man had been away from home on personal business having to do with his health, and was trying to get home but the locomotive of the train he had been traveling on had gone sour in a town called Presley Wells. Colt had been called to repair it. It had taken a few days and lodging was scarce. Colt and the old man shared a room and the stories of their lives.

All at once, the woods ended and the ranch came into view.

“Oh my, Colt,” Aunt Tillie said. “This is beautiful. Just what you dreamed of.”

It took some self-control not to leap from the bench and shout. In his mind he saw his horses running free with their tails and manes flying behind them.

“I’d like a ride on that carousel.” Grannie clapped her hands, her smile beaming.

“Really, Rose you know there’s no carousel way out here.”

A crow circled overhead, cawing.

“I may be losing my mind, Tillie, but you’ve lost your eyesight.”

“There is a carousel, Aunt Tillie.” Colt pointed to the spot where the faded machine sat a few hundred yards from the house.

The small plot of ground that held the carousel was Holly Jane’s land.

He wondered if she was bitter at the loss of the ranch. He hoped not. Could be, she felt freed of a burden.

At any rate, he hoped that the woman, likely getting past her prime and giving up on hope of a husband, would fit in well with Grannie Rose and Aunt Tillie. As part of the land deal, he’d agreed to let Holly Jane live in the house and to watch over her.

They crossed the bridge over the pretty, clear flowing river called Neighborly Creek. In a few more minutes he drew the horses to a halt in front of the house.

“Welcome home, ladies,” Colt said, wondering if either of them had noticed the hitch in his voice.

The place welcomed him before he ever walked in the front door. The porch wrapped all the way around the house so that a body could stand on it facing east and see the sunrise in the morning then sit on a chair facing west and watch the sun go down behind the grove of trees at the western edge of the property.

Thanks, old man, Colt thought, and hoped William knew how sorry he was for the circumstances that made Colt the new owner.

He helped Grannie and Aunt Tillie from the wagon. With a hand under each of their arms he escorted them to their new front door.

Comparing this home to the one they had left behind was like comparing a fistful of spring flowers to a tumbleweed.

He reached for the doorknob.

“I believe it’s only right for us to knock,” Aunt Tillie said. “Miss Holly Jane might take a fright to see strangers walking into her house.”

He sincerely hoped he wasn’t inheriting a frail and skittish female. Heaven help him, he could almost see her now, a pinch-faced old biddy too shy to find a man...and looking dried-out as straw.

But he’d given his word to watch out for her, and he would. He’d care for her the same as he would Grannie Rose or Aunt Tillie.

He knocked on the door, not too loud, in case the poor woman was the nervous kind.

No answer. He knocked again, louder. With still no answer, he opened the door.

The three of them stepped inside.

“Oh, my word,” Aunt Tillie whispered. “It looks like a whirly wind passed through.”

“I do hope the poor little dear hasn’t been carried off by a Folsom,” Grannie said, her voice cracking in alarm.

“Or a Broadhower.” Aunt Tillie touched her throat with a delicate age-spotted hand.

He’d place his bet on the former lady of the house being none too pleased to give it up. Chances are she wasn’t waiting with a tea-and-scone welcome.

Colt led the way through the dining room, where dried-out posies lay scattered on the table, then to the kitchen, where it looked like a pastry explosion had occurred.

Small human footprints tracked through a dusting of flour on the floor, along with some four-legged prints that looked suspiciously piglike.

It couldn’t be, but how many times had he seen an oinker indoors? Only once, and that was yesterday.

He left the kitchen and made a right for the stairs with the old ladies close behind him. There was a heavy feeling in his gut that his charge might not be the retiring violet he had imagined.

She might be temptation dressed in an angel’s guise.

He opened the first closed door he came to.

Hell and damn. Curled smack in the middle of the bed was a miniature pig flicking its ear so that the pink bow tied in it looked like a waving hankie. Curled up about the pig was yesterday’s angel covered in the proof of her crime and not a whole lot else.

Flour dusted her cheeks and dappled her hair. One hand lay against the pillow, dainty fingers curled, the other under her pink cheek. Her lips puckered in her sleep, looking soft and moist.

“I told you she was the one, Colt.” Grannie Rose bent over the bed, peering at Miss Holly Jane. “If she wasn’t, she wouldn’t look so at home in your bed.”