The Hadley house was only two blocks away, but Hadley had a light carriage. They drove the short distance with Chane making small talk with Hadley.
The house was big and comfortable. Their bedroom was dominated by a large four-poster bed and a fireplace on the outside wall. Hadley struck a match to the paper under the oak logs and fanned the tiny flame with a fan.
“The room’ll be warm in no time. If you’re hungry, there’s food in the pantry. Help yourself.”
“I could lay out a snack,” Mrs. Hadley said jovially.
“No, please,” Jennie protested. “I’ve been eating all day.” Mrs. Hadley was a gracious woman who seemed to like Jennie on sight. She carried in an overnight bag Marianne had packed and delivered to the house earlier, poured heated water into the basin on the bureau, and then excused herself.
As soon as the door closed behind her, Jennie took off her coat and tossed it on the bed. Still angry, she ignored Chane and struggled to unbutton her gown but couldn’t. Finally, Chane walked over and said, “I’ll do that.”
He carefully unbuttoned an entire row of eyelet-held buttons. “There.” Jennie walked to the mirror, slipped her arms out of her sleeves and pushed the gown down. Chane knew he should look away, but it would have been easier to cut off his hand. In the firelit room, her skin glowed with tawny warmth. A pulse started in his loins.
She stepped out of the gown, then backed up to him again. Chane undid the lacing on her corset and untied the strings holding her bustle in place around her slim waist. Her warm, soft skin seemed to scald his fingers.
Jennie stepped out of her undergarments and left them where they dropped. One didn’t drop fast enough. Furiously, she kicked it aside, and strode across the room clothed only in her petal-soft skin. Chane struggled desperately to keep from running his hands across her breasts and down her silky thighs.
She rummaged through the bag Marianne had packed, didn’t find what she wanted, and dumped the bag on the bed. “Damn,” she said with uncharacteristic vehemence. “I can’t imagine why she bothered to send this at all,” she grumbled, grabbing her brush angrily and striding to the mirror. She jerked the pins out of her hair and bent forward from the waist to brush the golden cloud.
Chane felt light-headed watching her. To distract himself, he walked to the bed and rummaged through the pile of garments for his nightshirt. It wasn’t in the bag.
Now he understood Jennie’s expletive. He felt like uttering one himself, but he didn’t. He undressed, climbed into the bed, and leaned against the headboard. With Jennie so mad, he didn’t feel comfortable lying down. Women had a way of wanting a man’s full attention when they were mad.
Jennie finished brushing her hair and stood up, flipping her long blond hair over her shoulders. With her legs spread and her hair fluffed out around her, she was incredibly beautiful and exciting.
She stalked through the mess of discarded garments, stopped at the bureau, and looked over her shoulder at him. “If you were a gentleman, you wouldn’t watch.”
“I’m not.”
“Suit yourself.” She wet the washcloth and lathered it with the soap she found on the bureau.
“I intend to,” he said. It seemed to Chane that she washed every part of her body two or three times. The firelight gleamed off her wet body, but strangely, Chane suffered less than he’d thought. The sight of her flesh acted on him like a narcotic. The joy of seeing her naked was so satisfying, he forgot everything else.
Too soon, she finished her ritual and toweled herself dry. She stomped across the room, threw back the covers, and climbed into bed.
“You forgot your nightgown.”
“I didn’t forget. Marianne didn’t pack it.”
“Mine, either.”
Jennie pulled the covers up to her chin.
“You forgot to turn out the lamp,” he said.
“I forgot?”
“You were the last one up.”
Angrily, she threw off the covers and stalked over to the lamp. She turned the wick down and stomped back to the bed.
They lay in silence for a moment. Jennifer thought he’d gone to sleep. Then he scooted over and pulled her toward him. “I thought—” Jennifer began.
“I changed my mind,” he said, stopping any further comment with his mouth. Any other time she would have been thrilled to have him approach her, but tonight she was furious at him for throwing Tom Tinkersley at her. She was too angry to feel anything at first, but slowly, as he continued to kiss her, the anger changed to hunger. It was just like the night of the fire again. Except this time her body was even more desperately deprived and lonely and starved for him. His every touch seemed magnified, vibrating through her and filling her with the sweetest, wildest, most exquisite feelings imaginable.
Chane must have sensed what he was doing to her. His kisses became more hungry and more hurtful, and it was exactly what she wanted and needed.
It was so wonderful to be held by him, to be touched by him, even to be hurt by him. He appeared to be the same man she’d married, but in some indescribable way, he had changed. She felt the difference in the way he touched her, the way he held her, the way he entered her. Before, he had treated her like a goddess. Now he treated her like a woman he’d hired for the night. He showed her no respect, no condescension, and no mercy.
Neither his hunger nor his strength seemed to have any limits. Before the night was over, she did things she had only heard whispers about in the girls’ dressing room at the Bellini. He didn’t even try to disguise the fact that he was using her to slake a purely physical hunger. And it didn’t matter.
He barely finished before he took her again, the last time in a way most women saw as painful and humiliating, but even that didn’t matter. She gloried in it, because it came from him. In spite of the pain, or perhaps even because of it, she reached dizzying peaks of ecstasy she hadn’t even imagined before. For the first time, she saw her husband not as her lover, but as savage male—dark, primal, and dangerous. She trembled before him, as weak and helpless as any woman prostrate before a conquering warrior.
She felt no shame until he rolled immediately away from her. Then she realized that nothing had changed. He’d pleasured himself, and her as well, but he still didn’t love or trust her.
Within moments his breathing told her he was asleep. Still trembling, Jennie lay in confusion, not sure whether she was supposed to see this as progress or not. Maybe this was how it started. Maybe he would go from using her to accepting her and then to loving her again. After tonight anything seemed possible. She’d never thought he would get this far. She fell asleep with that thought still spiraling through her mind.
Chane was gone the next morning when she woke up. She didn’t see him for two days, and when she did, he acted as if nothing had happened between them.
Work resumed on the railroad. Two weeks later they had spanned two small creeks and ten miles of track to reach Earle. At each town, they endured the festivities, the beer, the dancing, and the speeches. After each town it took Tom Tinkersley and his crew days to get all the men back to the job site.
March was cold and windy, but not nearly as cold as the winter had been. There were times in the afternoon when it was almost warm. Jennifer oversaw care of the sick and injured, settled disputes, and intervened when injustices occurred. The men were accustomed to seeing her pop up wherever and whenever something went wrong. They much preferred her to Mr. Kincaid, who wasn’t half as pretty or one-tenth as patient with them.
The Santa Fe Trail, which ran parallel to the railroad, was busy night and day now that the weather was moderate. Almost any time of the day, Jennifer could look up and see a rider, a lone Conestoga wagon, or a train of Conestogas. Occasionally a freight train of mule or ox teams pulling heavy loads moved noisily past. The trail was heavily traveled.
A blizzard hit the last week in March and brought work to a stop. Men huddled in their sleeping cars, grateful for the wood they’d cut and stored. They had to keep a window open at each end of the car to avoid asphyxiation, and frost formed on the blankets of men sleeping nearest the slitted windows.
During the blizzard, Chane rode the locomotive equipped with a heavy metal snow-plowing shield up and down the track to keep it cleared of snow.
The first night of the blizzard, the sheepherder, Jim Patrick, came into camp seeking warmth. The next morning he found his sheep bleating in fear and pain, many stuck to the icy ground they’d huddled against to keep warm. Chane ordered a crew of men with shovels to cut them loose before they pulled holes in their woolly coats trying to unstick themselves. This was repeated for three mornings. Finally, the icy north winds subsided, the clouds cleared, and the sun came out.
With the blizzard over the first week of April, the weather warmed and men returned to work with a vengeance. Chane said the only good thing about it was that it slowed Laurey down as well. Nights were still icy cold, but days grew as warm as seventy degrees in the sun. Men worked in shirtsleeves. Sounds of sheep bleating were commonplace. A whole new crop of lambs appeared as if by magic.
Chane was more worried about security now that they were approaching Raton Pass. He told Tinkersley to hire more guards and to be ready for anything.
Tom went into the nearest town and came back with four rough-looking men. He led them up to the Pullman coach and called Jennifer outside.
“Mrs. Kincaid, ma’am, I’d like to introduce you to some new additions to our security force.” He pointed to a tall, lean sandy-haired man, the obvious leader of the foursome.
“This is Jason Fletcher, my new assistant.”
Jason’s pale gray eyes failed to match the smile curving his thin lips. Jennifer had a sinking feeling she’d seen him before.
“Howdy, ma’am,” he said with a soft Southern accent.
“How do you do, Mr. Fletcher.”
“Don’t care much for the cold, but other than that, I’m just fine, ma’am.”
“You’re in the wrong part of the country for a man who doesn’t like cold.”
He chuckled softly. “Got that right, ma’am. Shore don’t know what I was thinking of.” His words were right and proper and spoken with respectful demeanor, but his eyes made her uncomfortable. They were as pale as water, and they didn’t seem to truly register her presence.
The other men were introduced as Miguel Etchevarria, a small, dark-eyed Basque; Clem Stringer, wiry and lean as catgut; and Jake Blackburn, a soft, pale man with a whiskey tenor voice.
She wouldn’t have hired any of them, but fortunately, they weren’t her problem. Between bookkeeping and inventory control for the cooks’ supplies, the doctor’s hospital supplies, and the track layers’ supplies, which were the most critical, Jennifer was busier than ever. Anyone who needed or wanted anything came to her first.
Every morning she stopped at the hospital car, labeled the “bed wagon” by irreverent railroaders. By now almost every man working for Chane had been in the bed wagon at least once. Between hospitalizations and paydays, she knew most of them by their first names. Some days she felt certain she went there to get the attention she couldn’t from her own husband. Unlike Chane, who had been avoiding her assiduously since that night in Thatcher, the men’s faces lit up when they saw her.
This morning she found only six men on the hospital’s twenty cots.
“’Morning, Mrs. Kincaid.”
“’Morning,” Jennifer said, stopping beside the first bed. “How’s your back today, Jethro?”
“Comin’ along, ma’am. Comin’ along. I reckon I’ll be leaning on a idiot stick in no time.”
Smiling, Jennifer walked to the next bed. “And how are you today, Russell?”
“Better now, ma’am, but I fear I’ve broke my pick.”
The men seemed to search out new ways to say things so she wouldn’t know what they meant. “Broke your pick?”
“Coughed a little last night. Plumb discouraged me.”
Jethro hooted. “Coughed all night last night, he did. Sounding more and more like a lunger.”
“I’ll get Dr. Campbell to take a look at you. You may need to be sent to a warmer climate. I don’t think this cold is good for you.”
She felt his head. It was hot and clammy. Consumption was a constant worry with some of the men. They just didn’t seem equipped to deal with the damp and the cold.
Jennifer checked the rest of her patients, talked to Campbell about them, and sent Marianne over with a pot of Cooky’s hot chicken soup to tide them over until lunchtime.
Marianne was a big help to Jennifer. Cooky was giving her lessons in the kitchen, and she was loving it. Every night at dinner, Marianne pointed out the dishes she had cooked and explained exactly how she’d done it. Now that certain basics had been explained to her, she was a natural in the kitchen.
The Chinese were the most industrious and clever people Jennifer had ever seen. They fished along the banks of the river, even in the rain, and sold fresh fish to the other men. They set up fan tan and pai gow games and won their money away from them. They baked Chinese cookies and pastries and sold them to whites and Chinese alike for a penny apiece.
Every week, Marianne took a pile of laundry to the Chinese. Most of their customers were non-Chinese who’d rather pay dearly for laundered clothes than wash them. Chane had laughed. “By the time we reach San Diego,” he said, “the Chinese will have pocketed all the money we’ve earned. Then they’ll go back to China and live like potentates.”
The Chinese had even put together a band. Men with horns and drums and flutes played odd music that Jennifer found she liked. The wind picked up the smell of incense and spread it into every corner of the encampment. The non-Chinese complained at first, but gradually got used to it.
Jennifer had less and less time for riding, but she couldn’t resist the new crop of sheep. At least once a day she took a break from her books to ride out to the sheepherder’s camp to take Jim Patrick something Marianne had baked and to marvel at the tiny, newborn sheep following their mamas as they grazed on the new grass. She loved their perfect, woolly bodies and their plaintive little bleats, but Tom Tinkersley didn’t trust Jim Patrick. He kept a close eye on the young man.
“I imagine you get a little lonely out here?” she asked Jim Patrick.
“Yes, ma’am. I about go crazy at times. If it weren’t for you and some of the men I get to talk to every now and again, I don’t know what I’d do…”
Chane rode his horse from one work site to another. The train carried timber and ties from the sawmill at La Junta. In the past, on a good day, the tracks were extended southward by two miles a day. As they neared the Raton Mountains, the terrain got rougher and the men clearing the right-of-way labored with greater difficulty and more slowly. They were lucky to lay a mile of track a day, then a half mile.
Trains arrived weekly with loads of rails and other needed supplies. Unfortunately, every load came with an invoice. Jennifer sat down to pay the bills, and this time she didn’t have enough money.
That afternoon when Chane came riding in, she met him and took him aside. “We’ve got a problem.”
Chane looked at her skeptically. “We’ve got lots of problems,” he said flatly.
Jennifer ignored the comment. “If we don’t do something soon, I’m going to have to start sending our regrets instead of a check.”
“Oh, that problem,” he said tersely. “All right.” Chane strode to the telegraph shack, which sat on a flatcar. Ever since they’d started down the rails, a crew had been stringing telegraph wire. The shack had been moved over so much rough terrain when they were carting it in by buckboard that the nails had shaken loose. Now it leaned to the left.
Chester Sims was asleep at the telegrapher’s desk, a wooden door laid over two sawhorses. Chane shook him awake and dictated a message to his brother Lance in Phoenix, telling him to bring whatever he’d managed to raise so far as soon as possible. He turned to leave. “When you get the answer to that, come and get me. I’ll be waiting for it.”
Chester sent the message, closed up the telegraph office, and climbed down from the flatcar. His stomach was growling with hunger. He walked to the mess car and lined up with others just coming in off the crews.
“Hey, Chester, them wires too heavy for you?” Ed Bailey asked. “Tapping out that one message or so a day getting you down?”
Chester scowled. It was boring enough sitting cooped up in that little rolling telegraph shack without having to put up with men like Ed Bailey. “Not the wires, but sometimes the information I have to carry gets a little weighty.”
Ed stopped smiling. It pleased Chester to wipe that smirk off Ed’s face. Ed always thought he knew more than anyone else.
“You got some important news?”
Chester didn’t, but he hated like the blazes to admit it to Ed. “Let’s just say I know things I’d just as soon not know.”
“Like what?”
Men stopped talking to listen.
Chester lowered his voice. He knew better than to disclose secrets, but once he got to talking, he couldn’t seem to stop just when he wanted to.
“Financial things,” he said with heavy stress on the fi. Ed Bailey scowled and started to reply. Just then Mr. Kincaid walked up to one of the cooks and stopped to chat. At the sight of Kincaid, men fell silent.
The communal dining car held a long table with a bench on each side. The plates were nailed to the table with one nail in the center of each plate. Chester shuffled up the steps, found an empty bench with a full plate, and ate his dinner in unaccustomed silence. Men with dippers refilled plates on request. Others with coffeepots refilled cups.
Chester liked Kincaid, but he didn’t like the idea of his building a road using men who weren’t going to be paid for it. Especially since he was one of the men.
His friend, Silas Brough, stopped beside Chester as he was heading toward the sleeping car. Behind them the waiters were getting ready to hose down the plates, tables, benches, and all. Chester was glad he’d eaten in the first shift. He hated sitting on a wet bench.
“What’s the matter with you, boy? The cat got your tongue?”
Chester never knew the answer to that. If the cat had got his tongue he wouldn’t be able to talk. If it hadn’t, it was a foolish question. “What would you do if you knew something important that might or might not be true?”
“Like what?”
“Like suppose Kincaid is broke and doesn’t mean to pay us?”
“Well, I’d say a man who knew that would be a damned fool to keep working under those circumstances.”
That night a hundred angry men cornered Chane and told him they were quitting.
“You mind if I ask why?”
Most of the men looked down at their shoes, tight-lipped, but one of the German immigrants stepped forward. “Ve hurdt you’ve gone bust, und ve harn’t willing to vork for notting.”
“If that were true, I wouldn’t blame you. I have every intention of paying for every hour worked.” He looked from face to face. “But I’m not going to lie to you. I have a temporary shortage of cash. My grandfather asked me to build this railroad for him, and he gave me startup money, but then he died, and the probate has tied up the money I should have been getting.”
Men muttered and looked at one another.
“I’ve wired my brother in Arizona. He’s on his way here with money for the April and May payrolls, but he isn’t here yet. I’ve applied for loans at two banks in Denver. But even with government guarantees, the loans are slow in coming. I realize this sounds like so much smoke, but I swear on the Bible you will be paid in full, every man of you.”
“But not this month, right?”
Chane expelled a frustrated breath. “I may have a problem with April.”
Men grumbled under their breaths and turned away. Other men had crowded around. Hundreds of men pressed in, trying to hear what was being said.
Jennifer walked up, and the crowd parted for her. She stopped beside Chane.
“What do you say, ma’am?”
“You’ve been paid every month so far. You’ve been treated fairly. Mr. Kincaid may be having a temporary problem, but I know he’ll make good on every dollar he owes.”
“That’s right,” one man said. “He’s treated us damned good.”
Others agreed.
“So, what’ll happen this month?”
Chane looked around at Jennie. Her body slim and proudly held, her profile sharp and clean-cut, she looked like Joan of Arc. A man would have to be a dolt not to believe anything she said.
“Well,” she said, looking quickly at Chane. “I haven’t discussed this with my husband, but the railroad gets one square mile of land for every mile of track it lays. We’re going to end up land-rich and cash-poor. Is there any man here who’d like to buy land with his wages?”
“How would that work exactly?”
Chane flashed an admiring smile at Jennie and explained it. She nodded at critical times. Chane noticed that every time she nodded, another man looked like he was ready to sign up. Finally he ended his speech.
“What do you think, ma’am?”
Jennifer looked at the crowd of men pressing around them. She knew almost every one of them by name. “I think it sounds like a wonderful opportunity,” she said honestly. “This is some of the most beautiful land I’ve ever seen. Of course, I’ve lived in cities all my life…I suppose if you prefer cities to open spaces—”
“Not me!”
“She’s right,” a man said loudly. Jennifer recognized him as one of the men she’d nursed. There’d been days when she felt sure men got “sick” just to talk to a woman. She couldn’t blame them for that. Except for the prostitutes and when they were near a town, she and Marianne were the only ones within miles.
“I’d do it in a minute,” she said firmly.
“Where do we sign up?” a man yelled from the back. “That’s as good a recommendation as I’ll ever need.”
Men cheered and laughed. “But what about us with families who’re waiting for money to live on?”
Chane looked at Jennie. “We have enough money to meet most of the payroll,” she said. “Anyone who needs to be paid either all or part of their pay can have it.”
“Good enough for me.” It seemed unanimous.
“A month’s pay is about as much of a down payment as I’ll want to make, though,” one man close to the front said.
Chane nodded. “Agreed. By May we should have solved this problem.” Either Lance would arrive with the money or his father would return from Europe—unless something was terribly wrong with his mother. That was a possibility he didn’t care to dwell on. Hopefully, they were having such a good time in Europe, they’d just forgotten they left him turning on the spit.
Steve recognized Jason as Marianne’s beau, and his heart sank a little. He wondered if she’d talked Tom into hiring him. Steve had been on his way to see Marianne, but now he veered off in another direction. She didn’t need two men chasing after her.
As the train reached each small town, Chane instituted rail service using backup engines acquired from his father’s railroad back East. By mid-April the towns behind them had regular train service using brand-new Baldwin locomotives. Unfortunately, the income from the new service was barely noticeable. And the service had its own costs in employee wages, coal, losses to rolling stock…
Jennifer’s head spun with the problems. Shippers didn’t ship when they said they would. Sometimes they didn’t ship what she’d ordered. Other times they shipped to wrong destinations. Fortunately, she enjoyed untangling messes.
Chane came back from the advance work site earlier than usual. He stuck his head in the door of the office car.
“Jennie, are you going to work all night? It’s suppertime.”
She looked up and smiled. “Welcome back.”
“How’s it going?”
“I’m designing a work sheet to keep track of our new payroll system so I don’t lose any information.”
Chane climbed up into the car and leaned over to look at the new ledger sheet. He reached over and his arm brushed her shoulder. A trembling started in her heart.
“Nice,” he said, checking the headings. “Looks like it’ll work.”
The trembling within grew worse. She knew he was waiting for her to say something, but her mind had stopped working.
Chane knelt beside her, tapped the ledger and looked over at her. The look on her face mystified him. Her cheeks looked unnaturally flushed.
“You’re tired, Jennie.”
“Am I?”
“I’d say so. You’re carrying a full load.”
“I like doing it,” she said weakly. Having him so near was sending unspeakable longings through her entire body.
“Even so, it’s still a load. How’s the money holding up?”
“It’s not. We got a bill for steel rails today. If we pay it right away, we’re going to be short what we need for payroll next payday. I’m encouraging men to sign up for the land exchange, but some of them have to have the money. I’ve been meeting with the men ahead of time to get an idea of how many need to be paid cash. It’s not as good as we’d hoped.”
Chane scowled. “If we don’t pay the steel bill, there’s a good possibility the rails will stop coming, or, worse yet, the rolling plant could fold. Can we make a partial payment?”
“I’m sure he’d prefer that to no payment at all.”
“If we have any luck, Lance is on his way.”
Steve was miserable. He didn’t feel like eating. He let Chane go to dinner without him. A noise at the door caused him to look that way. Marianne leaned against the doorjamb with a plate of something in her hand, a smile lighting up her eyes. The sight of her produced an unaccountable rush of feeling in him.
“Everyone else is down at the mess cars eating. You work too hard,” she said.
Steve leaned back and dragged in a breath to uncramp his tired muscles. “I’m not hungry.”
“I brought you some blueberry pie. It’s the first one I ever made, and Mrs. Kincaid says it’s wonderful.” Marianne fairly beamed with pride.
Her proud smile caused a slight discomfort around his heart that he didn’t know what to do about. Her soft brown hair was loose, blowing gently against her cheek with the evening breezes that came off the river. He’d never seen her looking prettier.
“How come you’re not eating?” he countered.
Marianne shrugged. “I don’t know. How come you haven’t come to see me?”
“Work.”
“You used to work and still come see me,” she reminded him.
“I thought you had a beau.”
The pride and happiness disappeared as if they’d never been there. Her face took on a pinched look of such misery, Steve was sorry he’d brought it up. He couldn’t imagine why a woman would keep seeing a man who caused her such discomfort.
“Is that why you haven’t talked to me? Because of Jason following me around? He doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“I’d hate to see how it’d look if he did.”
“I don’t like him.”
“You don’t need to explain to me. What you do with Jason is your business.”
Tears filled her eyes. “Don’t be mean to me, Steve. I hate it when you get mad at me.”
“I’m not mad.”
“Yes, you are. You know you are.” She paused. “Walk with me? Please?”
Steve knew he shouldn’t, but he had missed her. “All right.”
They walked south alongside the Santa Fe Trail toward the railhead. A hundred feet ahead the roadbed had been cleared and filled with gravel. The task would have been easier if they could just run the railroad down the middle of the Santa Fe Trail, but it was in daily use.
“I’d have bet money you couldn’t put a railroad through this brush country,” she said.
“You’d have counted without a thousand stubborn Chinamen.”
“They don’t look like they’d be good for anything at all, do they?”
Steve laughed. Marianne leaned against him for a moment, then turned and put her arms around his waist. She felt so good and warm and soft that his mind went blank. She reached up and touched his lips. Then she went up on tiptoe and kissed him. She led him into the thick bushes beside the cleared roadbed and pulled him down beside her. He knelt over her for a moment, but couldn’t seem to stop himself. Her skin was so soft and sweet under his fingers.
“Why did you stay away so long?” she asked, caressing his cheek with warm fingers.
“It’s a waste of time to court a woman who’s making eyes at another man.”
“Is that what was wrong with you?” She frowned up at him. “I wasn’t making eyes at Jason, nor he at me. Besides, his eyes give me the shakes.”
“They do?”
“Sure, and that’s not all. The very idea of him gives me the shakes. I really think he hangs around me because of Mrs. Kincaid. I think he’s got eyes for her. It’s not me,” she said with certainty.
Steve chuckled his relief. “Glad to hear that.” He was surprised by how much he meant it. A heavy weight that had been pressing on his heart seemed to lift.
Marianne shuddered with the memory of how miserable she’d been without him. She’d thought up all sorts of reasons why he didn’t like her anymore. It was such a relief to find out he’d been jealous. She reached up, pulled his head down, and kissed him.
He kissed her back, and she realized how close she’d come to losing him.
“I love you, Steve Hammond.”
He hugged her hard. “I love you, too.”
“Do you now?”
“Sure, and I guess I do now.”
Marianne giggled. “Sure, and you’re making fun of me.”
“Sure, and I wouldna’ be doing that,” he teased.
She was so happy she thought she would burst. He kissed her with heat and hunger, and she surrendered completely to his lovemaking, which quickened so many feelings in her, such darkness and sweetness and fire, that she wanted it to go on and on.
Jennifer woke to the strident cock-a-doodle-doo of the camp’s loudest rooster. She had half a mind to tell Cooky to use that rooster next. The sky looked blue from horizon to horizon as far as she could see, but waking up made her feel cranky. She turned over and buried her face in the pillow.
Chane was already gone. She must have overslept. Usually she heard him dressing while Cooky and Marianne rattled pots and pans cooking breakfast.
The outside door opened and closed. She thought she recognized his footsteps. Someone knocked softly on the door to her sleeping compartment. “Are you awake and decent?” Chane asked softly.
“Yes.” Holding the blanket around her, she sat up.
Chane stepped into the compartment and stopped beside the armoire that faced into the room. His black hair had fallen over his forehead. His sleeves were rolled up, exposing strong, brown forearms covered with crisp black hairs. He looked handsome and solemn this morning. One hand was behind his back.
“What do you have?”
“I found a rose.”
It was small and wet and pitiful. Several of the petals were missing and the green stem was bent and thorny. “It’s beautiful,” she breathed, taking it gingerly from his hand. Her heart pounded against her throat and seemed to swell there.
“I doubt you’d have given that scrawny little bud a moment’s notice last year.” He had to clear the unaccustomed huskiness out of his throat. “After all, you’re used to getting two or three dozen bundles of long-stemmed roses onstage every night.”
Jennifer laughed. “I’d forgotten that.”
Her life as a ballerina seemed only a dim memory. She searched his face. He seemed different somehow. More open to her. His eyes so intent on hers, so burning, his lips so grimly set, as if he were holding himself back from saying something to her, caused her heart to pound.
This one tiny rose seemed more wonderful than any dozens of roses in the past, because she’d earned this one. It had taken her months. She had suffered more than the whole rest of her life, but she had earned it with her own sweat and determination. She would keep this rose forever. Now she understood why women pressed flowers. If she lived to be a thousand years old, this would be the most special flower she would ever get. Part of her saw it as hopeful that he had given her the flower, and part of her saw it as the end of hope, his way of saying, “I’ll never love you again, but I appreciate you.”