Линда Миллер – The McKettrick Legend: Sierra's Homecoming (страница 19)

“Fresh hay to lie in, too,” Doss went on. “Nice and soft, and if a man were to spread a couple of horse blankets over it—”

Heat surged through Hannah, brought her to an aching simmer. She sputtered something and waved him away.

Doss chuckled, opened the door and went out, whistling merrily under his breath.

Hannah waited. If Doss McKettrick thought he was going to have his way with her—in the barn, of all places—well, he was just…

She got up, went to the stove and banked the fire with a poker.

He was just right, that was what he was.

She chose her biggest shawl, wrapped herself in it, and hurried after him.

Present Day

As soon as Sierra put supper on the table that night, the power went off again. While she scram bled for candles, Liam rushed to the nearest window.

“Travis’s trailer’s dark,” he said. “He’ll get hypothermia out there.”

Sierra sighed. “I’ll bet he comes back to see to the furnace, just like he did this morning. We’ll ask him to have supper with us.”

“I see him!” Liam cried glee fully. “He’s coming out of the barn, with a lantern!” He raced for the door, and before Sierra could stop him, he was outside, with no coat on, galloping through the deepening snow and shouting Travis’s name.

Sierra pulled on her own coat, grabbed Liam’s and hurried after him.

Travis was already herding him toward the house.

“Mom made meat loaf, and she says you can have some,” Liam was saying, as he tramped breathlessly along.

Sierra wrapped his coat around him, and would have scolded him, if her gaze hadn’t collided unexpectedly with Travis’s.

Travis shook his head.

She swallowed all that she’d been about to say and hustled her son into the house.

“I’ll start the generator,” Travis said.

Sierra nodded hastily and shut the door.

“Liam McKettrick,” she burst out, “what were you thinking, going out in that cold without a coat?”

In the candlelight, she saw Liam’s lower lip wobble. “Travis said it isn’t the cowboy way. He was about to put his coat on me when you came.”

“What isn’t the ‘cowboy way’?” she asked, chafing his icy hands between hers and praying he wouldn’t have an asthma attack or come down with pneumonia.

“Not wearing a coat,” Liam replied, downcast. “A cowboy is always prepared for any kind of weather, and he never rushes off half-cocked, without his gear.”

Sierra relaxed a little, stifled a smile. “Travis is right,” she said.

Liam brightened. “Do cowboys eat meat loaf?”

“I’m pretty sure they do,” Sierra answered.

The furnace came on, and she silently blessed Travis Reid for being there.

He let himself into the kitchen a few minutes later. By then Sierra had set another place at the table and lit several more candles. They all sat down at the same time, and there was something so natural about their gathering that way that Sierra’s throat caught.

“I hope you’re hungry,” she said, feeling awkward.

“I’m starved,” Travis replied.

“Cowboys eat meat loaf, right?” Liam inquired.

Travis grinned. “This one does,” he said.

“This one does, too,” Liam announced.

Sierra laughed, but tears came to her eyes at the same time. She was glad of the relative darkness, hoping no one would notice.

“Once,” Liam said, scooping a helping of meat loaf onto his plate, his gaze adoring as he focused on Travis, “I saw this show on the Science Channel. They found a cave man, in a block of ice. He was, like fourteen thousand years old! I betcha they could take some of his DNA and clone him if they wanted to.” He stopped for a quick breath. “And he was all blue, too. That’s what you’ll look like, if you sleep in that trailer tonight.”

“You’re not a kid,” Travis teased. “You’re a forty-year-old wearing a pygmy suit.”

“I’m really smart,” Liam went on. “So you ought to listen to me.”

Travis looked at Sierra, and their eyes caught, with an almost audible click and held.

“The generator’s low on gas,” Travis said. “So we have two choices. We can get in my truck and hope there are some empty motel rooms at the Lamp light Inn, or we can build up the fire in that cookstove and camp out in the kitchen.”

Liam had no trouble at all making the choice. “Camp out!” he whooped, waving his fork in the air. “Camp out!”

“You can’t be serious,” Sierra said to Travis.

“Oh, I’m serious, all right,” he answered.

“Lamp light Inn,” Sierra voted.

“Roads are bad,” Travis replied. “Real bad.”

“Once on TV, I saw a thing about these people who froze to death right in their car,” Liam put in.

“Be quiet,” Sierra told him.

“Happens all the time,” Travis said.

Which was how the three of them ended up bundled in sleeping bags, with couch and chair cushions for a makeshift mattress, lying side by side within the warm radius of the wood-burning stove.

CHAPTER SEVEN

1919

HANNAH AND DOSS RETURNED separately from the barn, by tacit agreement. Hannah, weak-kneed with residual pleasure and reeling with guilt, pumped water into a bucket to pour into the near-empty reservoir on the cookstove, then filled the two biggest kettles she had and set them on the stove to heat. She was adding wood to the fire when she heard Doss come in.

She blushed furiously, unable to meet his gaze, though she could feel it burning into her flesh, right through the clothes he’d sweet-talked her out of just an hour before, laying her down in the soft, surprisingly warm hay in an empty stall, kissing and caressing and nibbling at her until she’d begged him to take her.

Begged him.

She’d carried on something awful while he was at it, too.

“Look at me, Hannah,” he said.

She glared at Doss, marched past him into the pantry and dragged out the big wash tub stored there under a high shelf. She set it in front of the stove with an eloquent clang.

“Hannah,” Doss repeated.

“Go upstairs,” she told him, flustered. “Leave me to my bath.”

“You can’t wash away what we did,” he said.

She whirled on him that time, hands on her hips, fiery with temper. “Get out,” she ordered, keeping her voice down in case Tobias was still awake or even listening at the top of the stairs. “I need my privacy.”

Doss raised both hands to shoulder height, palms out, but his words were juxtaposed to the gesture. “If we’re going to talk about what you need, Hannah, it’s not a bath. It’s a lot more of what we just did in the barn.”

“Tobias might hear you!” Hannah whispered, outraged. If the broom hadn’t been on the back porch, she’d have grab bed it up and whacked him silly with it.

“He wouldn’t know what we were talking about even if he did,” Doss argued mildly, lowering his hands. He approached, plucked a piece of straw from Hannah’s hair and tickled her under the chin with it.

She felt as though she’d been electrified, and slapped his hand away.