sort, in her eyes.
It took some effort to forget Johnny’s smile, how he looked so gloriously happy to be off on an adventure when he rode away from her. It couldn’t mean anything, but still, she’d have rather seen a frown of regret.
In her opinion, it would have been a fine thing for them to work side by side to pay off the mortgage. Still, paid was paid and she should be grateful for it.
She tried not to think it, but would she be able to keep her property if something prevented Johnny from returning?
Yes, she thought so. Her booth at last week’s market had been a great success. It had been wonderful meeting so many friendly people, even if some of them did seem baffled about where her ranch was. She’d explained it, but in the end, they’d simply shrugged and welcomed her. There had been a few new ranchers to the area so the confusion was understandable.
Ten gongs chimed from the clock she’d found in the loft and placed on the mantel.
Time for bed and every muscle in her body was glad for it. Without a doubt, she was going to sleep like a stone. And a good thing, too. She would need to rise early in the morning to begin baking for market on Friday.
“Bedtime,” she announced to Chisel, who was already asleep in front of the hearth.
The dog twitched one ear. Clearly he was in no mood to move to another place to continue his doze. Leaning over him as far as she could, she banked the fire.
“Sweet dreams, my hairy friend.”
The soft woof he gave in answer must mean the same, she figured, except for the hairy part. Moments later, she fell into bed and was sleeping before she got three blessings counted.
* * *
Jesse drew the pocket watch from his vest. He wiped a smear of rain from the glass to find it was already one fifteen in the morning.
Hell, it was good to finally be home, no matter the hour.
A steady sheet of rain blurred the figure of Bingham racing across the bridge for home. Jesse had tried to get the boy to spend the night but he’d wanted to wake up in his own bed and was all but bursting to show his pa the horse he’d earned. The moment they’d sheltered the horses under the large lean-to in the corral, the kid had lit out for home.
Given Bingham’s youth, the extra hour of riding wouldn’t hurt. While Jesse was far from doddering, it had been a long, exhausting trip and he was weary to his bones. Walking over the bridge, he knew that if it weren’t that he was soaked to the skin, he would fall face-first onto his bed and not wake until the afternoon.
Through wavering sheets of rain, he spotted his house. In his mind, it had arms, wide open and ready to give him a welcome-home embrace.
Funny how something that wasn’t even alive could make him feel like that. It must be because a place of his own, that sense of belonging, had eluded him all his life.
It had taken a tragedy to get him here but—
What was in the windows? A white film? Fog, maybe?
He picked up his pace, his boots sucking in the mud with the effort to run. At the porch steps, he came up short, skidding and nearly going down with the shock of what he saw.
Not fog, not a white film, but curtains...lacy ones with dainty embroidered flowers.
Must be one of his neighbors played a joke on him while he was gone. Although he couldn’t imagine who it would be. He didn’t really know anyone well enough for that kind of humor.
He only hoped it wasn’t Martha Timbly, a widow more than ten years his senior. As new as he was to town, she had set her cap for him. She might have had the forwardness to decorate his place in order to show him what a fine wife she would be.
It didn’t seem likely that she had, but in the end, he could not imagine why there were curtains in his windows. He did know that in the morning they were coming down.
Given that his boots were more mud than leather, he shucked them off outside. His clothes weren’t much better so he shed them, too. Hopefully they would be dry enough come morning to put them back on so he could tend to his stock. Regretfully, all the clothes he owned were in the saddle packs he’d left behind under the lean-to. He would have remembered to bring them up to the house had he not put so much effort into trying to convince Bingham to stay the night.
He opened the front door, grateful that whoever had played the trick or done the courting hadn’t locked the door when they’d sneaked out. He doubted that many of his neighbors even had locks on their doors. Forget-Me-Not wasn’t a locking-doors kind of town.
He probably ought to check the barn to be sure no animals were in there to indicate that the prankster was still here. In his old life, he never left his door unlocked. The person he had been would have checked the barn and the trees surrounding it as a matter of habit.
But this was now. Goose bumps rippled over his bare flesh. Water dripped from his hair in an icy jag between his shoulder blades. He couldn’t get to his bed soon enough.
He paused for a moment to listen for any sound that shouldn’t be.
Nothing. Only the relentless pelting of rain on the roof.
Already half asleep, he plodded toward the bedroom, wondering if the jokester or the widow had done anything but hang curtains. He was just too tired to look right now.
Reaching for the blanket on the bed, his eyes already closed, his fingers curled about something that was not wool. Whatever it was shifted between his fingers like threads of silk...or hair?
His eyes jerked open.
There was a woman sleeping in his bed!
And not just any woman! It was her! The one he had met in town two weeks ago, the one he had daydreamed about so vividly.
Now, with his eyes wide and blinking, he could see that she had left a lamp burning low. It cast the room in a soft amber glow.
Just as in his imagination, the lady lay with shimmering cream-colored hair fanned out across his pillow. The same playful smile he’d conjured now lurked at the corners of her mouth. She must be engaged in some sweet dream.
Awake as he now felt, the room and the lady still bore a dream quality. Something about the shape of her mouth, the way her brown lashes deepened to black at the tips, felt more like a memory than the here and now. Could be he was in the grips of some magic spell. As if he believed in magic spells.
But...just maybe she would open her eyes and gaze upon him with love like she had in the daydream.
Or maybe he really was asleep again, dreaming that he was awake. Maybe the woman and the situation he knew her to be in had touched him more deeply than he realized so she was appearing in his dreams...day and night.
The only thing to do was wait and see what would happen next, if he would wake up or she would.
It was while he watched, eager and hoping to see again that devotion in her eyes, that he heard a growl.
Something lunged and knocked him sideways. The hit left him dazed. He closed
