Montana Bride (10 page)

Over the past two weeks he’d begun to speculate that she must not have been much older than Grace when she’d gotten pregnant for the first time. Had she even been married when Griffin was born? If she’d had a child out of wedlock, it would explain her willingness to move West.

Maybe she’d never been married. Or maybe she’d been married twice before. If so, what had happened to those two previous husbands? And who the hell was Clive?

Whatever Hetty’s past, he didn’t want to know any more than he already did. The only thing that mattered was her behavior from now on. And it had felt awfully good to have his wife take his side.

“If you’re through playing games,” Dennis said, mounting up, “you might want to help find us a place to camp tonight.” He kicked his horse and headed off toward the sunset.

Karl flushed at the censure. He’d stayed close to the wagon the past two weeks to play the game, letting Dennis do most of the scouting. Apparently, Dennis was more than ready to hand that duty back to him.

He mounted up without another word. Before he could ride away, he felt Hetty’s hand on his thigh. He looked down, startled by her touch.

“Karl?”

“What?” His voice was harsh with the need to restrain his sudden desire. It took all his willpower to resist the urge to pull her up onto the horse with him, to hold her tight and kiss her silly.

He wanted to make love to his wife.

Hetty looked taken aback for a moment, but she smiled up at him and said, “Thank you for the game.”

“It was Bao’s idea.”

“You were the one who ended up doing all the work. The children loved it. So did I. You were wonderful.”

Karl thought,
To hell with it.
He looped the reins around the saddle horn, leaned down and caught Hetty under the arms, and lifted her up onto his lap. He looked into her eyes and saw that she was stunned at what he’d done. He couldn’t have explained the impulse that had made him act. But as long as he’d gone this far, he followed his instincts and kissed his wife.

He was expecting resistance, but there was none. Her mouth opened at the press of his tongue, and he felt his heart pound as her hand caressed his neck. Karl pulled her tight against him, but there was no way to feel her body beneath the bulk of their coats, so he sought the connection to her that he wanted and needed through their kiss.

He’d barely begun tasting her sweetness when he heard a shout from Bao.

“Boss! Come quick!”

Karl broke the kiss, slid Hetty off his lap to the ground, and spurred his horse, all in the same instant. In the wilderness, moments could make the difference between life and death. As he galloped to catch up to the wagon, regretting the abrupt end to their kiss, he thought,
This had damned well better be one hell of an emergency!

Hetty stood stunned for a moment, unsteady on her feet, her fingertips pressed against her lips. She couldn’t believe what had just happened. First, that Karl had pulled her up onto his lap and kissed her in broad daylight, his tongue intruding into her mouth so she could actually taste him, and second, that he’d abandoned her so suddenly.

Her body was still discombobulated from the kiss, her breathing erratic, her heart thumping hard in her chest, but she forced her legs to work as she stumbled after him.

She heard Grace screaming. And Dennis yelling. And Bao’s shrill, broken English. And finally, Karl’s furious bellow above them all.

Hetty broke into a run.

What she saw when she reached the front of the wagon made her gasp and halt in her tracks. Karl and Dennis were engaged in a bout of fisticuffs! The fight between Clive Hamm and Joe Barnett passed before her eyes, along with its devastating conclusion.

“Stop!” she cried. “Oh, please, stop!”

The two men ignored her. It quickly became clear that Karl was outmatched by his larger, stronger friend. The skin around his puffed-up left eye was red and raw.

Karl ducked under Dennis’s swing and punched him in the gut. Dennis grunted and caught Karl in a crushing bear hug. Karl slipped a foot behind Dennis’s ankle and shoved, and Dennis tumbled to the ground with Karl on top of him. The two men began pummeling each other again.

Hetty was desperate to stop the fight, but she had no idea how. Maybe if she knew what had caused it, she would be able to end it. She turned to Grace and demanded, “What happened? Why are they fighting?”

Between sobs, Grace said, “Mr. Campbell hit Griffin.”

Hetty’s mouth fell open. “Why on earth would he do such a thing?” When Grace didn’t answer, she turned to Griffin and asked, “What happened, Griffin?”

“It was an accident!” Griffin protested.

“What was?” Hetty demanded.

Griffin snarled, “What happened!”

Frustrated that she didn’t know any more than she had before she’d started questioning Griffin, Hetty turned to Grace and asked, “Did you see what happened?”

“A stone from Griffin’s slingshot hit Mr. Campbell’s horse and made him buck and Mr. Campbell fell off and his horse ran away,” Grace said all in one breath.

“Oh, Griffin, no!” Hetty cried. “Where did you get a slingshot?”

“I made it.”

“Give it to me,” Hetty said.

Griffin pulled the wooden slingshot out of his belt and smacked it into her waiting hand, but his chin took on a brash tilt as he said, “Nobody slaps me. Not for nothin’!”

Hetty’s breath caught in her throat. “Dennis must have been sorely provoked. What else did you do?”

Griffin shot her a look of betrayal. “I should have known you’d take his side.”

Grace interceded to say, “Mr. Campbell grabbed a handful of Griffin’s coat—”

“So I kicked the son of a bitch in the shin!” Griffin finished.

“Karl arrived in the nick of time,” Grace sobbed. “That son of a bitch would have choked Griffin senseless for sure!”

Hetty opened her mouth to complain about the children’s use of that ugly term to describe Dennis Campbell and shut it again. Dennis was a grown man. He should know better than to attack a child, no matter what the provocation.

She turned back to the two snarling and grunting men wrestling on the ground, wondering how she could break up the furious fight without coming to serious harm herself.

Suddenly, Bao doused the two men with an entire bucket of icy water. They broke apart and came up spluttering and swearing.

Both men rose like shaggy, lumbering bears, turning to threaten Bao, who dropped the bucket, crossed his arms inside his wide sleeves, and said, “Confucius say: ‘Without feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts’?”

The two men stared at the Chinaman with jaws agape.

Hetty seized the opportunity to step between them. Since Karl was on top when the water got dumped, he’d gotten soaked. Water dripped from his hair and spiked his eyelashes. She put her hands on his wet coat, her back to Dennis, and said, “Enough. That’s enough, Karl. Dennis is your best friend. You’ve done enough to punish him for a slap.” She didn’t mention the apparent attempt to choke Griffin, since that was likely to enrage Karl all over again.

Then she turned around, keeping herself between the two men, and said, “Enough, Dennis. This is no way for best friends to treat each other. Griffin is sorry. It was an accident.”

“Like hell it was! That brat spooked my horse on purpose.”

“Did not!” Griffin retorted.

Hetty turned to Griffin and said, “You’d better get moving if you’re going to find Mr. Campbell’s horse before dark.”

“Me?” Griffin glanced at the surrounding wilderness with a look of trepidation, and Hetty almost changed her mind about sending him out to recover the horse. But she knew if there were no consequences for Griffin’s behavior, it would only get worse.

She pointed west and said, “Get moving.”

“I’ll go with him,” Grace offered.

Hetty almost stopped her, but it would be safer for the two children to be together. “Fine. We’ll camp right here. Be sure you’re both back before dark, whether you find Mr. Campbell’s horse or not.”

“You’d damn well better find him,” Dennis said.

“I told you to watch your language,” Karl warned, swiping at a cut on his cheek with the back of his hand and smearing blood across his face.

“Get moving!” Hetty ordered sharply. The sooner Griffin was out of Dennis’s sight, the better. As the children trotted away, Hetty turned back to the two men.

She gave her attention first to Dennis, hoping to calm him down. “Let me see your face.”

Dennis stood still as Hetty grasped his chin and gently turned his face back and forth so she could survey the damage. Dennis had a nasty bruise on his right cheekbone and a bleeding cut on his chin. She turned to Bao and said, “Mr. Lin, I’ll need your medicine kit.”

“What about me?” Karl demanded, hands on hips.

Hetty glanced over her shoulder and said, “Get out of those wet clothes before you catch pneumonia. I don’t want to find myself a widow before I’ve had a chance to be a wife.”

Karl looked disgruntled.

“Bao can take care of you while I doctor Dennis,” she told him. Hetty wished there was a way she could explain to Karl that she was nursing Dennis because she wanted a chance to question him further about his behavior toward Griffin. She tried meeting Karl’s gaze and sending a message with her eyes, but he turned and stomped away toward the back of the wagon.

“Come over here and sit down, Dennis,” Hetty said, leading him by the hand to a tree split by lightning that had fallen beside the trail. There was an awkward moment when she tried to free her hand and Dennis held on.

“I appreciate you taking the time to doctor me,” he said, caressing her palm with his thumb.

Hetty wished Dennis had been the one with his eye nearly swollen shut, because there was nothing to protect her from the look of admiration in his incredible blue eyes. She knew she shouldn’t feel flattered, but she couldn’t help it.

Oh, she was a horrible, fickle girl. Hetty would forever regret flirting with one man to make another jealous. She would never, for the rest of her life, do anything so foolish again. So she didn’t understand how she could be feeling like this with Dennis, when Karl’s recent kiss had almost caused her to swoon. What was wrong with her? How she wished for her twin! Hannah would have known how to put this rascally charmer in his place.

Luckily, Bao arrived at that moment with his medicines and a wet cloth. He set down the box and handed Hetty the rag. He took one look at Dennis and said to Hetty, “No need stitches. You remember which salve for bruises?”

Hetty opened the box and found the small jar with the salve Bao had told her would ease swelling. “This one,” she said certainly as she picked it out of the many jars inside the box.

Bao nodded. “I go take care of Boss.”

Hetty caught the Chinaman by the elbow and asked, “Is Karl badly hurt?” In hindsight, she realized she should have doctored him and let Bao take care of Dennis. Next time she would know better.

“No bad,” Bao said. “Black eye. Cheek bleed. Be well soon.”

Before she could ask more, the Chinaman was gone. She turned back to Dennis, who was sitting on the split log staring up at her with a frown between his brows.

“I didn’t think you cared about Karl,” Dennis said. “In fact, I would have bet my bottom dollar you dislike your husband.”

Hetty was startled into blurting, “You’re wrong. I admire Karl enormously.”

“Ah. But will you ever love him? That’s the question.”

Hetty flushed. “That’s between me and Karl.”

Dennis yelped as she dabbed at the blood on his chin with the damp rag.

“Don’t be a baby,” she chided.

“That hurts!”

She looked him in the eye and said, “I’m sure Griffin’s face hurts, too. Where you slapped him.”

Dennis had the grace to look ashamed. “I’m not used to dealing with kids. Especially not a brat like—”

“Don’t you dare call my son a brat!” Hetty said. “He’s a little boy who made a mistake.”

“That kind of mistake can be fatal out here,” Dennis countered. “What if I’d broken my neck coming off that horse? What if those kids can’t find my buckskin? A man on foot in this wilderness is a dead man. There’s no room for mistakes, Hetty. Not even for kids.”

Hetty dabbed more gently at Dennis’s chin and caught her lower lip between her teeth as she contemplated what he’d said. “I guess we all have a lot to learn,” she said at last. Most especially her.

She set the rag down on the log, then opened the jar and smoothed salve on the darkening bruise on Dennis’s cheek. “I’ve taken away Griffin’s slingshot, and I’ll admonish him to be more careful in the future.” She stopped what she was doing and looked into Dennis’s startlingly blue eyes. “But I give you fair warning. I won’t tolerate anyone striking a child of mine. Not for any reason.”

Dennis grimaced as he pursed his lips, which pulled on his injured chin. All signs of romance were gone from his face as he said, “You keep a tight rein on those kids of yours, and we’ll all get along fine.”

Hetty realized that was likely all the apology he was going to make. She was glad. She needed reasons to dislike Dennis, to keep her from so readily feeling the physical attraction that arose whenever he was near.

She closed the jar of salve and put it away in the box. “I’m done. You should change your wet clothes, too. It’ll be dark soon, and the temperature is brutal once the sun goes down.”

He grinned crookedly, a look so charming it made her breath catch, then saluted her and said, “Yes, ma’am.”

Hetty grabbed the box of medicines and hurried toward the back of the wagon almost at a run, searching for her husband. She would have to keep her distance from Dennis. She didn’t want to give him the wrong idea. Apparently, she couldn’t even take his hand to lead him to a seat without it being misconstrued or look into his eyes without him seeing an invitation that she didn’t intend.

She found Karl standing at the tailgate of the wagon in dry clothes, a sticking plaster on his cheek, but Bao was missing. “Where’s Mr. Lin?”

“I asked him to go keep an eye on the kids.”

She studied Karl’s damaged face. “Is your eye badly injured?”

“Bao says not,” he replied, reaching up to gently probe the swelling around his eye.

“Does it hurt?”

He laughed, then groaned and grabbed his ribs. “Don’t make me laugh. Everything hurts.”

“Your poor eye!”

He reached up toward his awful-looking left eye again but never touched it. “Bao says it’s going to snow tonight. I’ll be able to put something cold on it tomorrow morning to get the swelling down.”

“What are you doing for the swelling right now?”

“Bao said you have some kind of salve that’ll make it feel better.”

“Oh. I do.” She set the box down on the open tailgate and retrieved the jar of salve. She put a dab of salve on her finger, then hesitated. “Your eye looks tender. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“If that stuff will help, go to it.”

She was as gentle as she knew how to be, but he still winced as she applied the salve. He looked at her the whole time with the one brown eye he could see through. Hetty felt aware of his gaze, warmed by it. It was a totally different experience from what she’d felt when Dennis had gazed at her. Less threatening, she decided at last. More comfortable. More appropriate. Because he was her husband and had a right to look his fill.