Flint Hills Bride

“If it’s love, it’ll survive two weeks.”

She swung around to face him. “But he needs me now!”

Christian seemed only saddened by her outburst. “I’m sorry, Emily,” he said.

She scowled at him as he left her room. Two weeks wouldn’t make any difference to her parents. Christian’s arguments probably wouldn’t, either. Even her pregnancy—if there was a pregnancy—might not make them see reason. One of her friends from school had confided in her parents and had been sent to a maternity sanitarium. She had come home after the baby was born—a baby she was never even given a chance to see.

No, she couldn’t count on her parents. Or Christian. If she was going to be with Anson, she would have to do something herself.

Emily had hoped to spend the rest of the afternoon alone, but only minutes after Christian left, there was another knock followed by a loud whisper. “Are you sleeping?”

Emily opened the door and Willa flounced in. “Mama put Trevor down for a nap, and now she’s writing.”

Emily smiled at the girl’s sour face. Lynnette wrote love stories under the name Silver Nightingale. It had created quite a sensation when the family had first heard about it, though they were used to it now.

“I know!” Willa declared, trying to snap her fingers. “I’ll go make cookies.”

“You will?” Emily was always surprised at the girl’s self-confidence. “Have you made them by yourself before?”

“No, but I can. I’ll show you how, if you want.”

Emily laughed and took the child’s hand. While they went down the stairs, one step at a time, Willa related all the times she had helped make cookies, cakes and pies. By the time they rounded the bottom of the stairs and went through the dining room, Emily was almost convinced that the girl could make the treat herself.

She pushed through the kitchen door with a chattering Willa behind her and came face-to-face with Jake. The little girl skipped around her and headed toward Martha at the other end of the room. Emily stood staring at Jake.

After a moment she realized that he was actually several feet away and the plank table separated them. Somehow their eyes had locked in such a way as to minimize the distance. It was disconcerting, and she made an effort to shake it off.

She tore her eyes from his face and only then did she realize what he was doing. On the table were several piles of Martha’s dried flowers and a half-filled vase.

She grinned at him. “Here’s a talent I wasn’t aware of. Is this how you keep yourself busy between chasing desperados?”

He looked down at the flowers as if surprised to find them there. “I’m afraid you’ve caught me,” he said. “I’m arranging flowers without the first idea of what I’m doing.”

She laughed and joined him on his side of the table. “Are these for the dining table?”

He nodded.

“And what are these for?” She slid a pair of scissors out from under a few dry stems.

“Trimming my nails?”

She chewed the inside of her cheek. It wouldn’t do for him to think he had actually made her laugh. She was still mad at him. “Dear little Jake,” she said, looking up into his face a good eight inches above hers. “Flowers on the table can’t be so tall as to block people’s view of one another. These must be trimmed.”

She lifted the flowers out of the vase and prepared to start over. “You can run along now,” she said, uncertain whether she really wanted him to go or not.

“Oh, no. If I leave this to you, Ma’ll find me another job, and you might not come help.”

Had she imagined his emphasis on you? She was suddenly warm. Did he really have to stand so close? She was starting to feel slightly light-headed. It was the faint scent of the flowers, surely. She trimmed two of the brittle stems to the appropriate length and handed him the scissors, forcing him with her elbow to move a step away. “Trim all of those,” she said, indicating a pile of flowers, “the same length as these.”

She watched him take four of the flowers, line their heads up and carefully measure them against one of her trimmed flowers. Snap. He handed her the newly trimmed bouquet, giving her a courtly bow.

The pleased look on his face made her want to laugh. He was acting more inept than he actually was. She dropped the flowers into the vase and waited for his next offering. It came quickly. He was having fun now, trying five and six at a time. Soon the vase was full, and she called a halt to his trimming.

He snapped the scissors in the air twice, as if unsatisfied. “Now what?” he asked.

“Now, nothing. We put it on the table.”

“We’re done? That wasn’t so hard.”

Emily lifted the bowl as Martha stopped beside the table. “That’s lovely, children. I think the two of you should make the Christmas wreaths, you work so well together. Why don’t you go set the table while I clean up here?”

Emily nodded and headed for the door. Jake went around her quickly and held it open. “See what you did,” he whispered as she passed. He followed her into the dining room adding, “Now we have to make the wreaths. You should have let me do it wrong, and we’d never be asked again.”

She laughed as she set the vase on the sideboard and bent to find a tablecloth inside. “What kind of attitude is that for a lawman?”

She rose and turned before he answered. She thought for an instant that the gleam in his eye was something other than teasing, but it was gone before she could determine what it was.

“Lawman,” he said. “There’s the key. One wrong move, and I was ready to arrest those flowers.” He took an end of the cloth as she unfolded it and helped her spread it smoothly over the table. “But gussy up a wreath with pine cones and ribbons? I don’t know.”

“Come on, it’ll be fun.” Emily retrieved the vase of flowers and set it in the middle of the table. She realized she was looking forward to working on decorations with Jake. For the past few minutes, while they had made up the bouquet, she had been able to forget her worries.

She looked up to find him watching her again, that strange light back in his eyes. He turned quickly and headed for the sideboard. In a moment he was back with a handful of silverware. He didn’t look at her, and she didn’t speak, afraid of what she would see if she forced him to turn in her direction.

She went to gather the plates and napkins, aware of Jake in a way totally different from a few moments before. She felt almost an attraction. But that was absurd. She was merely missing Anson. Or responding to Jake’s attraction to her.

How could this have happened, this sudden change in perspective? And she knew she wasn’t imagining it.

Chapter Two (#ulink_d6e13d7f-b5c6-5b7b-b141-76fa33ab2696)

That night Jake lay on his bed in his parents’ frame house not far from the Prescotts’ stone mansion and studied the window-shaped moonlight on the ceiling. Why was he in love with Emily? Of course he had asked himself the same question many times over the years. There had never been a satisfactory answer.

Why shouldn’t he be in love with her? Now there was a question with plenty of answers. His family worked for hers, for one. Her family was rich, and he was a two-dollars-a-day deputy. She was a city girl who played at being a rancher in the summer and on holidays. He was a country boy who would be lost in the city and make a fool of himself at any fancy social event.

And it wasn’t as if she were perfect. She was more than a little spoiled, moderately lazy and very mouthy. Of course her sharp tongue had always been witty enough to be entertaining. He had usually felt he held his own in their verbal sparring.

Maybe she wasn’t really lazy. He only saw her when she was on vacation. Her family had bragged about her high marks in school, and he assumed she worked for the grades. She was actually quite an accomplished horsewoman, and, according to his mother, wonderful with Christian’s lively children.

Jake groaned and rolled to his side. Soon he would be convincing himself that she wasn’t really spoiled, that she simply deserved all the attention and advantages she had gotten all her life.

The whys and why-nots of his feelings didn’t change them. He wanted her. She made his pulse race simply by entering the room. She made him feel like a king when she smiled up at him. She filled his dreams.

God knows he had tried to feel the same way about other, more accessible, women. It never worked. He had compared them all to Emily, and they had all fallen short.

And now she was in love with someone else, someone totally unacceptable. God forgive him, but he had been thrilled to learn her family didn’t approve. He could feel less guilty for hating the bastard.

It was going to be hell being with her every day, knowing she was thinking about Berkeley, but it was something he had to do. He had to protect her. He told himself he wasn’t going to try to win her. He wasn’t acceptable, either. Someday he would have to watch her marry someone else.

But not now. And not Berkeley.