He slammed the door behind him.
Cora clanked her silverware against her plate. Let him storm off in a fuss. She’d spoken the truth. Hadn’t she? As much as one could string together a clump of facts and yet not have them convey the real story. She clomped her arms down on the table and dropped her forehead to her wrists.
How had the conversation gotten so far off track? What business of hers was it what he did with his letters or who wrote to him? He wasn’t her beau. As a matter of fact, sheshould encourage his entanglement with the perfume princess. Build another wall between Ben and herself. Right. Any such suggestion would die on her tongue. The best she could hope for was to keep her mouth shut, but tonight, she’d failed miserably even at that.
She pushed up from her chair and slung her napkin across the room. How in the world had Ben ended up proposing to some upper class flirt? Influence from his family? Maybe it was the laudanum, and now that he was free of its influence…
The looks he gave her sometimes jellified her knees and filled her stomach with butterflies. It couldn’t all be just her imagination. There had to be something to it, especially the way he’d fumed all evening over LeBeau’s visits.
She leaned over the dry sink by the window and slid back the curtain. Ben wasn’t in sight, but the chop of an ax boomed through the air. Surely, he wasn’t chopping wood. That was Charlie’s chore, and they already had a pile big enough to last two or three days.
She should find him and make amends. Tell him it’d be fine with her if he never spoke to Olivia again. Tell him that Arthur wasn’t the man she wanted to come calling. What if something happened while Ben was away? Rounding up cattle across country he didn’t know? And who could be certain when the Comanche or Kiowa might strike? She shuddered. There were no guarantees.
Rubbing her hands up and down her arms, she slipped across the hall to her bedroom for a better view, the room which had once been her parents’. Kneeling on her bed, she peeked out.
In the half dark, Ben stood at the woodpile, swinging away at a log on the chopping block.Smack. The blade came down with a vengeance. Split in half, two sections toppled off the block. He swiped his wrist across his brow and raked his fingers through his dark hair. He’d unbuttoned his shirt at the neck, and hiswaistcoat lay atop the rain barrel. A fine-looking man. And the most stubborn one she’d ever met. What would it be like to have those strong, muscular arms wrapped around her?
Goodness. She shoved the curtains aside and yanked the shutters closed, blocking out sound and light and encasing the room in heat. What had gotten into her? Spring? Not to mention, she was twenty-four years old, on her way to becoming a spinster.
That’s why she’d allowed Arthur to come calling. To bolster her heart’s resistance to a man with invisible chains.
CHAPTER 22
Ben awoke with a start into pitch black. Why?
Ruff-ruff.Jack barked in the yard. The dog was supposed to be in the house.
Ben swung his legs over the side of the bunk. He grabbed his trousers and stumbled to the window, banging his knee on a chair.
Ruff-Ruff.
Charlie’s voice drifted upward. “C’mon, Jack.”
What was the boy doing outside? Worried about raiders, Cora forbade Charlie to leave the house in the middle of the night. She had him use the chamber pot instead.
Ben shoved the window up. Cool air whisked inward. Moonlight lit the yard.
Dressed in trousers but no shirt, Charlie grabbed Jack’s collar and dragged him toward the porch. The pup stiffened his legs and clawed the dirt like some mule destined for a bath, forcing the boy to pick him up.
A dead stillness pervaded the night. The air hung heavy.
Ben glanced toward the palisade walls. The gate…it almost looked as if it were ajar. Not wide open, but not closed either.Couldn’t be. He’d checked it tonight as he always did when he was home.Home. But it looked… A chill shivered through him.
Ruff-ruff.Jack squirmed out of Charlie’s arms and ran in a circle around his feet.
Ben bolted for his holster at the bedside. Had the Colt in his hands by the time he made it back to the window.
A shadow by the pecan tree moved.
“Get in the house,” Ben yelled to Charlie down below. “Now.”
The boy stooped to scoop up the dog.
The shadow became a man, bow raised and arrow nocked.
Ben squeezed the Colt’s trigger. The man dropped.
A war whoop rang out. A man jumped from behind the oak. An arrow zinged by Ben’s cheek and plunked behind him. Ben fired. The front cabin door slammed open, and Cora bolted onto the porch, dressed in nothing but her chemise.
