her palm as it rested on her lap. Timmy leaned forward, in peril of falling to the floor, balancing himself oh the very edge of the seat, and smiled at her sleepily. “I’ll be your friend, Miss Johanna.”
Her heart skipped a beat. Her throat ached with unshed tears, and she blinked her eyes vigorously, lest she allow even one teardrop to fall. “I’d like that,” she whispered.
Pete roughly pushed his brother’s arm aside. “I’m your friend, Timmy.”
Johanna smiled at the younger boy, and then the smile faded as she looked up at the children’s father. His brow pulling into a frown, he bent to view the three of them.
“Everything all right, Johanna? The preacher’s coming back in. Are you about ready?”
Was she ready? Heaven knew she needed a boost of strength from somewhere. She’d just been rejected by Tate’s eldest boy, and that on top of the nervous stomach she’d been struggling with all morning. And now it didn’t feel as if her legs were going to hold her upright.
Her lips curved into a shaky smile. “I’m fine, Tate.” Liar, her heart cried.
His hand enclosed hers, and he tugged her gently to her feet, then led her to the altar where the minister waited.
“Last chance to back out, Johanna,” he said so that no one else could hear.
Johanna thought of the cows he’d milked this morning, the hay he’d forked into the mangers. She remembered the easy way he’d carried furniture yesterday, his words of thanks as she served his supper. She envisioned the task of climbing a ladder to pick apples, imagined trying to tend to the herd of cattle all winter, when the west wind blew snow from the big lake. And then she swallowed her doubts as she accepted the hand he offered her.
His arm slid from around her waist, and he clasped her fingers within his own. It would be all right, she decided. It was a good bargain, this marriage she’d agreed to. Taking a deep breath, she fixed her gaze on Theodore Hughes, watching him open the small book he’d drawn from his pocket. His smile was encouraging as he lifted the cover and turned carefully to a page he’d marked beforehand. With one more long look at the couple facing him, he took a breath and began.
“Dearly beloved…”
“I thought you’d told Pete we were going to be married today.” She hadn’t been able to look Tate fully in the face since the ceremony, and now she spoke with her back to him, her hands busy with stirring the gravy and tending the simmering kettle of beans. The vision of the small boy’s sullen face had been in the forefront of her mind, a surprise she hadn’t planned on.
“Pete’s kinda hard to sort out sometimes,” Tate said quietly. “He listened while I told him you and I were to be married, but it wasn’t what he wanted to hear, and I suspect he just pretended to himself it wasn’t going to happen.”
“Did he think you were just going to stay here?”
Tate shook his head. “Who knows what a child thinks? He seemed happy enough with being here, I agree. I doubt he’d thought about my marrying again. We’d talked before about finding someone to watch after both boys.” His voice softened. “To tell the truth, Johanna, till I caught sight of you, I hadn’t worried too much about remarriage. I was willing to settle for a housekeeper.”
“Until you saw me, or my farm?”
“Both, maybe. I just knew this was the place I was willing to put down roots. Don’t ask me how I knew. I couldn’t tell you. Any more than I could say why I knew you’d be a woman I could marry. I gave you a whole string of reasons why you appealed to me as a mother for my boys.” He tilted his head and eyed her knowingly. “Maybe I just wanted to make it permanent, like you said, so you couldn’t change your mind and skin out if the going got tough.”
Johanna’s spoon circled the skillet slowly, swirling the thickening gravy in a methodical fashion, a task she could manage without a whole lot of concentration. It was a good thing, too, because her thoughts had been in a swivet since the moment Tate Montgomery planted his mouth against hers, sealing their bargain before God and man.
She’d expected him to graze her cheek, or maybe the corner of her mouth. Just to make things look right. What she hadn’t expected was the warmth of his lips, or the soft brush of them against her own before he found the spot he wanted to land on, or the impact of the male scent of him in her nostrils. She’d inhaled sharply when his mouth touched hers, thereby stamping the smell of his shaving soap and the aroma of freshly washed hair and skin on her mind.
It had only lasted a second or two, that kiss he’d given her with such ease and assurance, but the memory of it was still causing her to doubt her sanity.
She’d been kissed before, more thoroughly and at greater length. She’d been seduced by a man who was fairly knowledgable at the game. Her body had known the possession of that man, had shrunk from his greater strength at the end, had endured the rending of her flesh as her innocence surrendered to his taking.
Yet none of that had touched her inner heart as had the warm caress of Tate Montgomery’s kiss. It had spoken to her of commitment, as if in that one gesture he’d taken on her problems, her debts, her worries and her woes. She’d felt, for that moment, safe and secure, with his hands clasping her forearms, his head bent low to salute her with the wedding kiss. She’d felt like a bride, almost.
Tate had held her arm in his grasp, guiding her past the women who would have gushed their well-wishes and words of advice in her ear, had he given them more of a chance. As it was, the two of them had made their way down the aisle and out the door within minutes of the short ceremony. Tate had gathered up his boys on the way and piled them into the back of the wagon with an economy of motion Johanna could not help but admire. The man knew how to make an exit, she’d give him that. As if he recognized her unwillingness to make small talk, he’d taken charge in grand style. They’d been on their way home before the preacher cleared the doorway, ushering the remnants of his flock before him.
“You going to stir that gravy all day, or are we going to get to put it on our potatoes?” Tate had left his seat at the table and walked up behind her.
“It’s done.” Her voice was downright normal, she was pleased to note. Her hands made all the right movements, picking up the pot holders, serving up the vegetables, pouring the perfectly smooth gravy into her mother’s china gravy boat and then placing everything on the table. All without looking once at the man who watched her every movement as if he were trying to see beneath her skin.
“You’re all upset about this, aren’t you, Johanna? We need to be comfortable with each other. We can’t live in this house like two strangers.”
“I don’t see how it can be any different, for now at least,” she answered, pulling the oven door open, rescuing the biscuits in the nick of time. “We are strangers.”
The woman who’d been dancing around in his mind for two days had taken to ignoring him ever since they repeated their vows, two hours ago. He’d thought to hear her making small talk while she cooked, maybe tell him about the people who’d hung around to watch the impromptu wedding. She could even have told him about the farm. Hell, he hadn’t even known how many head of cattle she had till he went looking for
