After the Storm (20 page)

Just enough so she had to wonder if he still was talking about the axle when he murmured, “I'll have to come up with a few new ideas, won't I?”

She backed away, hitting the kitchen table hard enough to make it rattle. He walked out of the kitchen, whistling the very tune she had been humming before he came in. Astonished, she realized she had heard it first when he whistled it. Samuel Jennings was becoming a part of her life in so many ways.

Leaning in the doorway, she watched through the window as he strode toward the barn. The confidence in his step was not arrogance, and his smile was sincere. He was unquestionably beguiling, and his kisses burned on her lips for hours after he was no longer holding her. He was everything she had dreamed about when she was a young girl. A man who thought she was beautiful in spite of her freckles and her height. If only she had met him before …

Cailin shook those silly thoughts from her head. She started to untie her apron, then left it on. The white apron was stained, but it covered many of the patches along the front of her dress. She got her bonnet. By the time she came out into the yard, Samuel had the horse harnessed to the wagon.

He drove slowly, so the dust raised by the horse was not smothering. Even so, she began to cough as she waved the particles away from her face. When he offered to stop the wagon, she motioned for him to keep on going.

“You're a stubborn woman,” he grumbled, but he slapped the reins on the horse as they turned down a road leading toward the river. He pulled out a handkerchief and handed it to her.

Her coughing disappeared as the road became a grassy trail. When they came over a small hill, she saw a cottage. Its whitewash glistened in the sunlight, and she was astonished to see a bright red door set in the center of a porch with a single rocking chair.

As they stopped, her gaze was pulled toward the river. A steamboat was docked at the small wharf reaching out into the river. On the sidewheel
The Ohio Star
was painted in bright red paint around a blue star. The sound of a hammer striking metal came from somewhere on an upper deck.

Samuel helped her down from the wagon and shouted, when the hammering paused for a moment, “Wyatt, are you around?”

A dark-haired man peered over the railing on the middle deck. “I should have guessed you'd be right on time.” He walked with easy confidence on the deck, which rocked with the river's current.

Samuel's hand on her arm guided Cailin down the hill and onto the wharf. Her first tentative steps told her the boards were not going to crack beneath her.

As he reached the stairs, the man on the boat called, “Check the boiler now, Horace, and see what pressure you can get.”

An older man peered out of a door on the bottom deck. “Give me a few more minutes.”

The dark-haired man crossed the lower deck and jumped across a narrow finger of water to the wharf. As he walked toward them, he pushed back his hair and settled his cap in place.

He put his fingers to the brim as he looked at her. “Ma'am.”

“This is Wyatt Colton,” Samuel said. “Wyatt, Cailin Rafferty.”

“There's no doubting you're the mother of the Rafferty kids,” Wyatt said with a deep laugh. “Same red hair. Rachel and Kitty Cat are in Haven. Rachel is helping Anderson with his books.”

“Books?” Cailin asked. “Is she going to work in the library when it's built?”

He wiped his hands on a cloth he pulled out of a pocket. “I should have said Rachel is helping with his financial books. She did all the finances for the River's Haven Community, and now she's working for folks around the Haven area. They're going to be sorry they missed you. Rachel has been wanting to meet you.” He put his foot against the boat's railing. “We've been pretty busy since
The Ohio Star
tied up here.”

“Where is it headed?” Cailin asked, fascinated by the ship with its large paddlewheels on either side.

“Up the river to Cincinnati, so putting in for repairs here was sensible.” He smiled. “Anything you need picked up in Cincinnati, Samuel?
The Ohio Star
can bring it back on her way down river to Louisville.”

“Nothing, thanks.” Samuel's reaction to the word
Cincinnati
was so restrained, Cailin doubted if Wyatt had even noticed it. She would not have, if she had not seen it before. Samuel had admitted he had come here looking for a haven. From what? Not just from the life he had known as an attorney.

She silenced her questions as she walked back up the hill with the two men. While Wyatt showed Samuel the repairs he had made, she gazed along the river. Its silvery thread glinted in the sunshine. She saw clouds rising over the horizon to darken it to the west. Maybe the long-awaited storm would come tonight.

“That's damn—blasted heavy,” Wyatt said as he closed the back of the wagon. “If you roll it out, I don't know if it will stay together.”

“Brendan can help me,” Samuel said. “The boy's gotten to be a great hand to have at the farm. He's learning faster than I can teach him.”

“Right now, Kitty Cat seems to be an expert on looking for trouble.” He laughed. “Something she's had a lot of experience at.” He tipped his cap again. “Glad to meet you, Cailin.”

“And you.” She smiled as she let Wyatt give her a hand up onto the seat while Samuel swung up on the other side. “One of these days, I'm sure I'll meet Rachel and Kitty Cat.”

“I'm sure you will.” With a grin, he walked back toward the steamboat.

Samuel steered the wagon onto the road. Waving his handkerchief like a limp fan to keep the dust away, Cailin thought about the ice cream they had enjoyed. Maybe she would take the girls and see if they could find enough berries to make more. Or maybe they could make ice cream with some of the chocolate.

She sat straighter as the wagon turned into a road that angled back toward the river. “Where are we going? This isn't the way to the house.”

“You're right.” He rested his elbows on his knees as the horse went along at a pace appropriate for the hot day. “I have one more stop to make.”

“Where?”

“Curiosity killed the cat,” he teased.

“A fine sentiment if my name was Kitty Cat. However, it isn't.”

“I know. It's Cailin O'Shea Rafferty.”

She regarded him with bafflement. “Why are you babbling?”

“Brendan came out to the cornfield to let me know you were wearing a sad face. He was upset enough to accuse me of doing something to hurt you.”

“You didn't do anything.” She put her hand on his arm. “We were talking of Athair.”

“So he said, after he calmed down.”

“My father's birthday is tomorrow, and I hate not spending it with him.”

“I'm sorry.”

She smiled sadly. “And I'm sorry Brendan accused you of something that wasn't your fault.”

He did not reply as he drew the wagon into a small grove of trees. Stopping, he jumped down and came around to her side. He held up his hand.

It was a summons her heart refused to allow her to ignore. Putting her fingers in his, she turned to step down. He released her hand and grasped her at the waist. Lifting her off the seat, he lowered her slowly until her feet touched the ground. Then he took her hand again and pressed his mouth to her palm.

She whispered, “I don't like being irritated with you.”

“And you make it blasted difficult to be angry with you when you look at me with those brown puppy-dog eyes. I guess I'm just going to have to accept that you don't trust me.”

“How can I trust you when you've made no secret of the fact that you want my children?”

Running his finger along her sleeve, he whispered, “The one I want now is you.”

“You're making this even more awkward.” She walked along the wagon to put some space between them but did not step out into the punishing sunshine. “You shouldn't say things like that.”

“Do you want me to lie to you, Cailin?”

“No.”

“Then what do you want?”

She faced him, not surprised that he was less than an arm's length away. “You'd like me to say you, wouldn't you?”

“I wouldn't mind a bit.” His finger slipped across her shoulder to wrap itself in a loose strand of her hair. “But it was an honest question.”

“I'll give you an honest answer. I want to go home and pretend I never came to America.”

He laughed coolly. “I should have known better than to ask you for the truth if I didn't want to hear it.”

“Samuel, I'm glad we've had a chance to meet. That's honest. But your life is here, and mine is in Ireland.”

“Where your kids never had a chance to go to school and you lived in a house with a dirt floor?”

She wrung her hands in her apron until she heard the thin fabric rip. “I want my children to go to school. With learning, they can be whatever they wish to be, but my father is back there all alone. We should be with him.”

Taking her hands in his, he did not move closer. “There's no sense in letting this gnaw at you when you're a long way from having the money to go back.”

“If I asked you—”

“I thought you didn't want anything from me.”

“It would be a loan.”

He shook his head. “You know I won't agree to anything that takes the children away from Haven a minute sooner than necessary.”

“I know.”

“So we're at the same stalemate we've been from the beginning. Shall we call a truce, Cailin? We'll both stop trying to distrust the other. That would be a good start.”

“I will try.”

“And so will I.” He released one of her hands but held on to the other as he led her through the trees.

“Where are we going?” she asked as she let the cool shadows wash away the day's heat. A faint breeze rattled the leaves against each other, and the grass was soft and green beneath her feet, not brown like the stalks drying in the sunlight.

“Just for a walk.”

“We both have chores to do.”

“And the hardest one is trusting each other, isn't it?”

She sighed. “I don't want to talk about that again.”

“Then shall we talk about the heat?”

“Not when it's so pleasant here beneath the trees. Let's talk about something else.”

“How about you? Can we talk about you?” he asked as he swung her hand.

“I'm a duller subject than the weather.” She smiled.

He stroked her fingers. “That's strange, Cailin. I don't find you the least bit boring. You're an endless puzzle to me.”

“Me? A puzzle?' She laughed. “I'd say it was the other way around.”

Instead of answering, he continued to lead her through the grove. Dappled shadows darkened his hair and dripped along her gown, hiding the patches. When they emerged from beneath the trees, the pungent smell of ripe fields ready to be harvested combined with the aroma of the muddy riverbank. Trees whispered like children laughing together. The sound was diminished by the whine of insects in the bushes.

She held up her hand to protect her eyes from the sun's reflection on the pond in front of them. It was big enough so the house and barn could have been placed in the middle. Looking along the river, she saw the familiar barn not far away. She had not guessed they were so close to it.

“What a pretty spot!” She turned slowly. “I'm surprised you have a pond when your farm is near the river.”

“The river looks closer than it is. A bluff drops down to the riverbank. The pumper from Haven, even if it could get here in time to fight a fire, wouldn't be able to get water from the river to the barn or house. From here, there's a chance.” He laughed. “Assuming the fire burns very slowly.”

“Very, very slowly.” Squatting down, she put her fingers in the water. “It's cold!”

“There's a spring in the bottom so the water stays cold all year round. I widened the bowl it was sitting in to make this pond.” He kneaded his shoulder. “That job almost persuaded me I didn't want to be a farmer. I never wanted to see a spade again.”

“This must be what Lottie was talking about when she asked me if a water spirit lived nearby.” She stood. “I've told them stories about spirits who live in springs in Ireland.”

“Do you think that's her friend Dahi?”

“Who knows? She apparently inherited her grandfather's gift for storytelling.”

Again he took her hand. As they walked through the tall grass that reached almost to her knees, he said, “I've been thinking that, with the house being so blasted hot, we might have a picnic some evening here by the pond.”

“A picnic?”

“Haven't you ever been on a picnic?”

“I've eaten in the fields when I helped my father on our farm, but never on a whim.”

He smiled. “We'll have to do something to rectify that. We'll bring the children and come here with a basket and a blanket to enjoy a cool meal on a hot night.”

“That sounds wonderful.” She wiped her forehead. “I hate to complain, but—”

“It's hot.” Walking toward the trees that circled the pond on three sides, he laughed. He sat her on a rock and dropped to the ground beside her. “I think I'll let the sun pass by a little before I fix the wagon.”

“Look.” Cailin smiled as she stood and walked around the nearly perfect circle of stones at the edge of the wood. “I used to call those fairy circles. There was one not far from our farm. I'd go there hoping to capture a fairy.”

“Not a leprechaun?”

“These are
fairy
circles.” She laughed. “The little people are more likely found along a country lane where they might trick a foolish mortal into giving up his last coin.”

“You sound as if you believe in such things.”

“I don't disbelieve.” She sat on a log just outside the ring of stones. “Who knows what I might have chanced upon?”