Lynna Banning - Loner's Lady

“It was clear once. Before Dan left. I believed in him. I believed in the farm, the land. In myself. I knew what my duty was as a wife.”

She shouldn’t be telling him this! But she’d kept the fight between her duty and her feelings inside for so long she would burst if she didn’t let out just a little bit of it. “Now, I…well, of course I still believe in the land.”

Jess stopped rocking. “But not in yourself?”

She shook her head, then started on the second ear of corn on her plate. “Not so much anymore. Sometimes I have to ask myself…” She stopped, surprised at her need to talk about it. Surprised by the feelings she had kept locked up inside her.

He tipped the rocking chair forward. “You ever ask yourself what you will do if Dan doesn’t come back? Why a woman like you is wasting her life waiting for a man who’s been gone all these years?”

Her eyes widened. “Well, yes. I keep thinking one of these days he’ll just walk in the gate, but it’s been almost three years. I don’t know how to stop waiting for him.”

Jess nodded. “I wondered the same thing about my own life once. Nobody walked through my gate, so one day I got the bit in my teeth and walked through it myself. Left the army and came north.”

With Callie. That’s where everything started to go sour.

“I expect I am talking too much,” Ellen said. Her cheeks grew pink as she forked up her beans. “I always talk to myself when I’m frightened or worried about something.”

“Long conversations?” He didn’t have the vaguest idea why he asked that, other than he was taken with the idea of her talking to herself. What did an almost-dried-up farm wife say to herself?

“Oh, not always. Sometimes I talk to Florence while I’m milking her. And the chickens, although they are terrible listeners.”

Jess choked back a snort of laughter. Chickens. And Florence.

“Sometimes I even talk to my carrots and tomatoes. I tell them how proud I am that they grow so nicely.”

Jess fastened his gaze on the plate of food in his lap. Her guileless confession was like a sharp stick poking at his heart.

“I’d say you’re lonely, Miz O’Brian.”

She said nothing for a long while. Finally she pushed her empty plate to one side of the lap pillow and laid her fork down alongside the two well-cleaned corncobs. “Mr. Flint, could I trouble you for a glass of water?”

Jess grinned. She sure could. He’d thought about his surprise most of the day. That is, when he wasn’t busy mapping the property. Tipping the two corncobs from her plate onto his, he went downstairs, returning in a few moments with two glasses of cold liquid.

“Lemonade!” she exclaimed at the first taste. “Where did you—?”

“At the mercantile in town.” The look of wonder and delight on her face pricked his chest in a way he hadn’t expected.

She took two big swallows, sighed with pleasure and then skewered him with those eyes of hers. “You didn’t steal the lemons, did you?”

“On the contrary. You paid for them.” He waited for her to object, but she said not one word, just wrapped her hands around the cool glass and smiled.

“You don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve tasted lemonade.”

He could guess. About as long as it had been since she’d cranked up a batch of ice cream or had a new dress or danced at a social.

Or made love with a man.

Where had that come from? Ah, hell, it was obvious. She didn’t have the look of a woman who ran loose; she tied up her hair at her neck and made do with chickens and a broken-down horse for company.

And then there was his own hunger, Jess admitted. The human male was simpleminded in some very basic ways. But he couldn’t let that get in his way.

“You ready to try out the crutch?”

She drank the last of the lemonade and set the glass on the night table. “I guess I’m ready.”

Jess studied her splinted right leg. “You’ll have to sit up and swing your legs to the edge of the bed. Let your right one stick straight out, and don’t try to bend it.”

He settled his hands on her shoulders and pulled her up off the pile of pillows, then gently pivoted her body and eased her legs into position. He tried to shut out his awareness of her as a woman, how warm her skin felt, how good she smelled. Might be easier if she had more covering her than just her camisole and her drawers, especially with one leg split up to her thigh.

“Does it hurt?”

“Some. Not sharp and awful like it was before you set it. Just a steady ache.”

“You cannot put any weight on that leg, Ellen. When you stand up, the crutch and your left leg will have to support you. You understand?”

She nodded. He positioned the crutch pad under her right armpit. Keeping his hands at her waist, he tugged her toward him until she stood upright. She swayed forward, but he tightened his grip to steady her.

“Take a step.”

“I will if I can,” she said. Her voice shook slightly, and he realized she was frightened. “Don’t let go of me.”

She plunked the crutch tip onto the floor and lurched toward him. Again he steadied her, but this time she was closer. So close he could smell her hair, a fragrance like roses and something spicy and clean. He loosened his grip at her waist, but kept his hands in place so she wouldn’t fall.

She stumbled into him, then righted herself, breathing heavily. His own breathing was none too steady, he noted. The brief touch of her forehead against his chin, the smoky-sweet scent rising from her skin slammed into his gut like a 50-caliber bullet.

Instantly he lifted his hands from her body, but too late. He wanted to smell her, all of her. Taste her.

And more. His groin tightened.

Jess let out an uneven breath. What the hell was he thinking? There was something he had to do here, and the woman didn’t matter. She damn well couldn’t matter.

I t took Ellen a quarter of an hour to maneuver herself down the stairs using the crutch Mr. Flint had contrived for her. Settling one leg on the lower step and swinging the curved oak staff down to meet it, stair by stair, she managed a noisy descent, terrified that at any second she would land off balance and tumble to the bottom. But not even the ache in her injured leg dampened her determination. She had chickens to feed. She had herself to feed as well.

Moving around on only one good leg made her heart pound with exertion. By the time she reached the landing, her breath was heaving in and out in hoarse gasps. Now she knew why old Jeremiah Dowd, who had lost a leg during the War of the Rebellion, spent so many afternoons sitting under the leafy oak tree in the town square.

The first thing she saw when she stumped into the kitchen was her blue speckleware coffeepot on the still-warm stove. She lifted the lid and peeked in to find an almost full pot of rich-smelling brew. Four fresh eggs nestled in a china bowl, and the frying pan waited beside it. Thoughtful of the man. Either he was more civilized than she’d thought or he was after something.

But what? What would make a man like Mr. Flint take interest in the tiny farm she was working so hard to hold on to?

She broke the eggs into the bowl, whipped them into a froth with a fork and had just poured them into the butter-coated pan when she glanced out the window. Her hand froze on the spatula.

Mr. Flint stood in her yard, stirring something in her washtub, which sat over a fire pit he’d dug. With his shirt off he looked younger than she had supposed, his chest well developed, his back lean and tanned. She gazed at his smooth, bronzy skin and the V of fine dark hair that disappeared beneath his belt buckle until she felt her cheeks flush. With every movement of the peeled branch he used to stir the tub contents, sinewy muscles rippled in his shoulders.