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       Chapter Eight

      Some days later, Clarissa finished wiping the last of the supper plates and paused for her nightly stocktaking meditation. She had saved a few dollars already. Precious dollars. But she needed many more for the train ticket back to Boston. Emily was adapting, almost effortlessly, to life on the ranch but Clarissa grew more and more dispirited with every passing day. Or rather every passing breakfast, dinner and supper. It was a wonder Gray had not complained. It was an even greater miracle he had not fired her! Maybe that was what he’d wanted to talk to her about that night.

      With a sigh, she hung the damp dish towel on the hook by the stove and drifted out the open front door to the porch where everyone had gathered—the ranch hands, Shorty and Nebraska, and even Erasmus, the old man who took care of the horses and swept out the barn. Maria and Ramon sat on the top step, holding hands.

      The day had been scorching right up until the sun sank behind the far-off purplish mountains to the north with a last wash of flaming crimson and orange. Out here in the country night fell with a finality she still found unnerving. She gazed out at the unrelieved blackness, then stepped off the porch and looked up at the sky. Back in Boston the stars had never seemed this close, like tiny blobs of silvery dough scattered across the velvet sky.

      She remounted the steps, settled herself in the porch swing and breathed in the scent of roses and the honeysuckle vine that twined over the trellis. Nebraska was tuning up his fiddle and soon launched into “Red River Valley.” After one verse Erasmus pulled a battered harmonica from his overalls pocket and joined in. It wasn’t a symphony orchestra or a chamber ensemble, as she had enjoyed back in Boston, but the music sounded lovely, anyway.

      Maria brought out a big pitcher of lemonade and a bowl of ripe strawberries, and Clarissa nibbled and let her thoughts drift. What would her life have been like if Anthony and Roseanne had lived? Emily would have had a real mother and a father, and she herself...well, perhaps she would have walked out with an admirer, maybe even married and had a child of her own. As it was, she’d been too absorbed in caring for Emily to entertain many callers, and outside of an occasional concert or visit to the library, she’d spent all her time learning to be a mother. She wouldn’t trade Emily for anything on earth, but sometimes she did wonder about what she had missed in life.

      * * *

      Emily was quiet this evening. Perched on the porch between Gray’s long legs she wasn’t even clamoring for a story. The music rose and fell, and soon Emily’s head began to droop onto Gray’s knee. After a while, Ramon stood and beckoned Maria into his arms and they began to dance around and around on the porch.

      Emily seemed to wake up at this, and jiggled Gray’s knee. “You gonna dance with me?”

      “Well, now,” he said in a low voice, “I don’t know. I’m not real good at dancin’.”

      The girl jumped to her feet. “I bet I could teach you!” She tugged on his hand. “Come on. You’re not scared, are ya, Gray?”

      “Scared?” Gray got to his feet and took both the girl’s hands in his. “I’m not scared of a four-year-old girl with a thousand questions, no.” But he had to admit he was plenty scared about other things, like losing more of his cattle to rustlers or finding more bad water. Or losing his ranch. And he was definitely uneasy about Caleb Arness. He’d expected the man to show up before now, and he couldn’t help but wonder why he hadn’t. Probably he was in jail. Again. Next time he went into town he’d ask around and stop by the sheriff’s office and inquire.

      He had to bend down a bit to dance with Emily, but the ecstatic look on her freckled face made the effort worthwhile. He liked making her smile. She had to take two or three steps to every one of his, so their progress around the porch was slow, but Emily didn’t seem to care. Her red curls bobbed in time with the fiddle music, and she alternately grinned up at him and grinned at her mother where she rocked in the porch swing. It was kinda fun steering the girl around the floor. Maria smile broadly at him, and Ramon sent him a wink.

      When they two-stepped in front of the swing, Emily suddenly dropped his hand and darted forward. “Mama, look at me—we’re dancing!” She grabbed Clarissa’s skirt. “Come and dance with us!”

      “Oh, no, honey, I couldn’t do that.”

      But Emily wasn’t about to be put off. She seized Clarissa’s skirt with both fists and yanked on it until her mother gave up and got to her feet. Emily entwined one of her hands with Gray’s and with the other she glommed onto Clarissa’s. Before he knew it, they had all joined hands to form a threesome.

      Clarissa sent him a look that made him chuckle—half apology, half amusement, but her warm hand fit nicely in his, and he had to admit he liked that. The three of them began to circle around the porch in time to “Down in the Valley.” Emily swooped and giggled with such uninhibited verve that Gray laughed out loud, and then he caught Clarissa’s gaze. Suddenly the sounds around him faded until nothing remained but a faint humming in his brain.

      What the hell?

      In the next instant Emily dropped his hand, gave a happy chirp and twirled off by herself, leaving Gray and Clarissa facing each other.

      “Well,” Clarissa said with obvious embarrassment, “I suppose we should—”

      “Dance,” he finished.

      Without another word Gray pulled her into his arms and began to move in a slow, steady pattern.

      Clarissa blinked. Where on earth had he learned to waltz? Certainly not in a silver mine! Perhaps at some place like Serena’s on Willow Street; after all, he was young and virile and...

      She missed a step. He held her gently, his hand at her back pressing just close enough that her breasts brushed the front of his chambray shirt. Heavens, could he feel that? The contact made them tingle in a decidedly pleasant way.

      Emily settled herself near Ramon and Maria and snuggled her head against the woman’s arm. Ramon began singing along with “Clementine,” and Maria was sitting with her head on his shoulder. They looked so happy together her throat ached.

      Gray danced her to the edge of the porch, then to the far end where the honeysuckle twined up to the rooftop. What an odd sensation, being this close him. She hadn’t danced with anyone since she was ten years old, but this was decidedly different. She felt light and floaty inside. Never in her life had she been so intensely aware of another human being, not even when she had first held baby Emily in her arms.

      * * *

      Gray forgot everything but the feel of the woman he held in his arms. Something smelled real sweet, maybe her hair. It was dark and shiny, and she wore it gathered in a loose bun at the nape of her neck. Kinda old-maidish, but she sure didn’t seem like one. Clarissa Seaforth might be an overly proper Boston lady, but in his arms she just felt like a woman—soft and alive.

      Surprisingly alive. Surprisingly arousing, if he were honest with himself. He’d never felt such an undercurrent of can’t-ignore-it desire. He decided to ignore it anyway and hope it would go away.

      But it didn’t go away. It just kept building and building like a summer storm. He tried to keep his mind on the fiddle music, the painted boards of the porch under his boots, the look on Ramon’s face as he sat beside his wife. That didn’t help much. Kinda made him feel hungry and lonely at the same time.

      He closed his eyes and tried to think. He didn’t have time for a woman—any woman, and especially not a proper lady. He only had time to brand cattle and mend fences and dig wells and keep his ranch together.

      All he had to do was pay Clarissa the three dollars she earned each week as his cook and pretty soon she would climb on the eastbound train and be