For the rest of the way home, the lamp lit him from the inside out. Emma did nice things for folks without a thought to it. What made her think she’d be happy alone?
Twenty minutes later Matt dropped the wagon off at the kitchen door. He unhitched the team and took them to the barn.
He was still a hundred feet from the house when the rain let loose. He dashed across the yard and came in through the kitchen door. He took off his muddy boots and left them on the porch.
A plate of cold stew and room-warmed biscuits sat on top of the stove.
He chomped down a biscuit in two bites. He was so hungry that even cold, the stew tasted like heaven. He could have eaten dinner at the Long Branch, but the food at the saloon had the flavor of dirt compared to Emma’s vittles, even stone-cold.
Matt gobbled down another biscuit, then crossed the hall to the parlor to turn down the lamp that Emma had left burning.
His heart tripped over in his chest. She hadn’t just left the lamp burning for him—she’d fallen asleep on the sofa…waiting.
Wasn’t she the image of an angel? She sat with her knees tucked up, her arm stretched along the back of the sofa and her hair scattered loose. The lamplight shone on the curling strands and made them glow. Her nightgown covered her as sheer as morning mist, except where her toes poked out from under the hem.
He knelt to ease the sudden weakness in his knees. To his remembrance, no one had ever waited up for him.
He’d wanted to touch her hair ever since their wedding day, but she rarely let it loose. A man couldn’t accidentally happen to caress golden curls wrapped tight in a bun.
He touched a strand at her temple, then drew his fingers through the long mass. He watched it glow in the lamplight. Corn-silk kisses slid over his skin.
“Emma,” he whispered.
She smiled in her sleep and stretched so that the fabric of her gown strained across her breasts. “Darlin’, time for bed.”
A sigh trembled across her lips. Lord have mercy if that sweet mouth wasn’t blushing pink. It would take a better man than him not to kiss it.
Matt leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers. Leather brushed silk, and sparks seemed to fly out the ends of his hair. He could have sworn that every song he’d ever sung rushed through him.
Emma purred deep in her throat. She touched his hair. She drew the side of her hand along his jaw. The warm gold of her wedding band slid across the stubble of his beard with a whisper touch.
All at once she gasped and opened her eyes. She flung her arms about his neck and squeezed so tight that her lush chest pressed against his dizzy heart.
“Mercy! I was so worried. I thought sure Hawker had killed you.”
Something warm and moist smeared against his neck. It could have been the rain he’d brought in on his clothes, but he didn’t think so.
Matt gripped her shoulders and held her back at arm’s length, searching her eyes for signs of tears. He felt his insides go shaky for an instant when a single glistening drop rolled down her cheek. His own mother had never spared him more than a moment’s worry over the years.
“It’s all right, darlin’.” He stroked away the precious moisture with his thumb. “I was safe enough at the Long Branch.”
How he could end up sprawled out on the floor with his wife’s features gone from warm syrup to sour milk was a puzzle he would never understand.
“I worried my heart out while you—” She stood over him with her fingers clinched up tight. After a moment of heavy breathing, they relaxed and the sour-milk scowl on her face softened to bread dough. Matt couldn’t recall ever seeing a less readable expression in his life.
“I can’t imagine what got into me.” She held out her hand as though to help him up. “Lands, you have every right to go where you want and see…well, that’s up to you who you see.”
Since Matt didn’t want to miss an opportunity to touch his wife, he took her hand and eased himself up off the floor.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Matt wasn’t sorry. He felt like a king of the cowboys knowing she could get in a temper over his whereabouts.