“‘How Great Thou Art.’ You probably sing it in church sometimes.” If they went to church.
“Claire doesn’t remember you.” She watched him with blue eyes that seemed far too old for her ten years. “And Ma says you ran off right after you put Megan in her belly.”
“I didn’t…”Run off.But that was a conversation he needed to have with his wife, not his daughter. “I’m glad you remember. I liked singing to you.”
She pressed a hand to her ear, her brows furrowed with pain she must have been hiding when she’d come inside. “Now that you’re back, will you sing again?”
“If you want me to.” He glanced out the window at the snow coating the roof of Jessalyn’s building. “It might be a while before there’s another thunderstorm though.”
Olivia laughed, not the childish giggle of her younger sisters, but the older, more mature sound of a girl not that many years away from becoming a woman. “It doesn’t need to be for that. Do you know any songs to sing when you’re sick?”
He cleared his throat and looked into those clear blue eyes that were so like her mother’s.
“Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to Thy bosom fly,
While the nearer waters roll, while the tempest still is high.
Hide me, O my Savior, hide, till the storm of life is past;
Safe into the haven guide; O receive my soul at last.”
The sweet notes and words were almost like breathing to him, but silence greeted him after he sang the final note, and once again the heaviness of everyone’s gaze weighed him down. He had sung the entire hymn over and over to himself in the weeks following his accident, when the doctor had thought he might lose his arm. He could hardly help that he loved singing it, or that the words and melody brought him peace.
“Is there more?” Olivia finally asked, her hand still pressed to her ear.
“Three more verses.” Though his throat felt thick and scratchy after singing only the one. “Perhaps I can teach them to you after we build that snowman?”
Her face lit with a smile. “All right. You won’t forget or be too busy, will you?”
Too busy? For his daughters?Never.
Except that wasn’t quite true, because he’d been too busy to leave South Dakota and get them ever since he’d built his hotel.
“No, I don’t have anything planned for today.” Besides convincing Jessalyn she needed to come to South Dakota.
His smallest daughter, a girl he hadn’t even known existed until yesterday, bounded forward to stand beside Olivia. Her coat was buttoned all the way up to her neck, and her knit cap was pulled tight over her blonde ringlets. “I want a snow doggy. Mama won’t let us have a real doggy. Will you help me build a snow doggy?”
He hunkered down and ran a finger along the side of the girl’s cheek, a smile creeping onto his face. “I’d love to help you make a snow doggy.”
If Jessalyn was as easy to please as his daughters, he’d have the lot of them headed to Deadwood in no time.
Chapter Five
“You told him you wouldn’t go with him? Jessalyn!”
Jessalyn cringed at the rebuke in her best friend’s voice and stirred her tea, never mind her cup was nearly empty.
Across the table, Tressa Oakton closed her eyes and groaned, her wavy light brown hair piled messily atop her head while she held a tiny bundle against her shoulder. “He’s your husband. What were you thinking?”
“Not about him being my husband, that’s for certain.” Jessalyn took a sip of bitter tea and refused to let the tears pricking the backs of her eyes drop. She’d shed enough tears over him five years ago. Becoming a watering pot now wouldn’t do her or the girls any good.
“Oh, Jess.” Tressa reached across the table and took her hand. The baby in Tressa’s arms squirmed in protest at the movement, then settled right back into slumber. “I’m so sorry about all this. Well, not the part about Thomas finally returning, but about him wanting you to move. We’ll miss you.”
Jessalyn shot up from the table, the legs of her chair screeching across the floor. “Who said anything about me goingwith him? I told him to leave Eagle Harbor this morning with the sailors.”
Tressa made a strangled sound, then sat back in her chair. “That doesn’t mean he’ll do it.”
“He didn’t have any trouble leaving me and the girls before.” Oh, curse her wretched voice. Must it always tremble when she spoke of Thomas? “I don’t know why he’d have trouble leaving us again.”
