Jessalyn’s jaw trembled. “I keep telling you, I don’t have a bed anymore.”
“Sure you do.” She didn’t fight him as he rested an arm across the back of her shoulders and led her into Isaac’s small room with its double bed tucked against the wall. “Isaac said he’d stay with Elijah and Victoria until we have someplace else to go.”
“We?” She looked at him, her eyes dull with fatigue.
“Yes, we.”
Her shoulders slumped, but she didn’t argue, perhaps because she didn’t have the energy. Instead, she climbed into bed and met his eyes with her red-rimmed ones. “I never told you thank you.”
“For kicking Isaac out of his apartment? You’re welcome.” He shucked off his shirt, leaving his union suit on underneath, then sat on the bed to remove his trousers.
“No, for saving us.” Her finger traced the pattern on the quilt, and she looked down, swallowing. “After how I sent you away at the Cummingses’ I hardly deserved to have you turn around and save me and the girls.”
“I wish you hadn’t needed saving, but you don’t need to thank me for it. I’d do anything to keep you and our daughters safe.” He rested his hand atop hers on the quilt, stilling her movements.
She drew her head up, her teary blue eyes meeting his. “I know. And yet I don’t understand it.”
“You don’t understand why I want to protect you?”
“No. I don’t understand why I knew that you would.” Her voice was soft inside the small room, and yet he heard every word she spoke, every gentle breath that puffed from her lips. “I don’t feel like I can trust you in so many areas, and yet when our lives were at stake, you were the first place I turned, and I never once doubted that you’d save us.”
“I’d save you all over again if I could.” His eyes felt gritty, as though he were still standing in the smoke from the fire.
“I know. Thank you.” She glanced at him uncertainly, then tucked her bottom lip between her teeth. “Will you… can you… hold me? Just for a bit. Just until I fall asleep.”
He needed no further invitation. He bent to unlace his boots, then tugged off his trousers, crawling into bed with his wife wearing only his union suit.
He nestled under the covers and pulled her to his side. She didn’t even hesitate as she snuggled against him and rested her head on his chest.
I love you, Jess.But speaking those words would unleash a whole other conversation between them, one they were both too exhausted to deal with tonight. So he stroked a hand absently up and down her arm instead, once, then twice. Somewhere between his seventh and eighth strokes, her breathing evened with sleep.
He shifted against the mattress and pulled her closer, then stared up at the ceiling. This had been what he’d dreamed in Deadwood, when he thought of returning to Jessalyn and telling her about his hotel, about all the money he had, all the things he could give her. He’d expected her to jump and cry and smile, to throw herself into his arms and rain kisses on his face. To snuggle up beside him in bed and ask to hear the entire story about how he’d come to own a hotel.
He’d never imagined her own dreams would need to burn to the ground before he finally got to hold her.
Chapter Fifteen
“Ican’t afford Olivia’s surgery.”
Thomas blinked his eyes open, only to be greeted with a face full of silky blonde hair. “Huh?”
The soft, warm lump nestled against his left side shifted, and he winced at the throb in his shoulder. Carrying the ladder during the fire last night must have strained it. Or carrying his daughters. Or probably even looking at it wrong. Sometimes the pain seemed to be growing worse rather than better.
“Olivia’s surgery. I wanted to pay for it, and now I can’t.”
“I’ll pay for it.” He rolled onto his side and hooked an arm over Jessalyn’s waist. The extra ache in his shoulder from lying on it just might be worth snuggling with his wife for another minute or two.
But rather than relax against him, she wriggled out from under his arm and sat up in bed, her jaw trembling when her vibrant blue eyes met his. “What if I’m too scared to let you?”
He huffed out a breath. He was waking up next to his wife for the first time in five years, and she wanted to talk about money and surgeries. This wasn’t exactly how he’d envisioned the morning going.
“What are you scared of?” he mumbled, his eyelids drifting closed. Did she realize how late they’d gotten to bed last night? Even if she didn’t want to sleep anymore, couldn’t she wait a few more hours before she started talking about what would happen six months from now?
“I’m scared of trusting you… and then getting hurt all over again.”
Trusting him and getting hurt? His eyelids sprang open. Hadn’t she said that she’d never once doubted he’d save them from the fire last night?
Yes, right after she’d told him she couldn’t trust him in any other area of her life.
