her hand out of his. She laced her fingers together in front of her and stared at them as though they held the answer to some confounding puzzle. “I’ll just say good-night.”
Rain pelted with a sudden burst. It slammed the roof with the force of roving cattle. Hopefully, the new shingles would be a match for nature’s abuse.
* * *
Emma turned on her pretty pink toes and walked toward her bedroom.
“Whoa there, darlin’!” He took a long stride with his own bare feet and caught her elbow in a gentle tug that spun her around up close to his chest. “I think you’ve got the wrong idea about my trip to town.”
“You’re free to take up with anyone you want to,” her lips said, but her eyes had gone a deep wounded blue.
“First of all, I didn’t take up with anyone. As long as I’m a married man, I won’t.”
That brightened her eyes a shade.
“I confess to having more than one drink at the saloon, but mostly I was there to listen. Men tend to be loose with the things they say around a gaming table. I needed to find out if anyone has had word of Hawker.”
“Lands, yes!” Emma stepped out of his arms. “Tell me everything you heard while I warm up your dinner.”
Matt followed her foglike gown into the kitchen. Didn’t her hips roll like prairie grass in a breeze?
“I ate it already.” His fingers itched, so he shoved them into the pockets of his jeans. “He isn’t here—that’s about all I know.”
“Maybe he’ll have an accident on the way and he’ll never show up at all.”
“Stranger things have happened.” Like a man who’d never had roots wanting them to grow deep into a woman’s heart. “Come over to the window. I want to show you the other reason I went to town.”
He spread the curtains apart so that she could see the wagon. Emma stood beside him stretching up on her toes to peer out into the rain.
“Have mercy!” she cried out. “Is that a copper bathtub? And half-filled with rain!”
“I never gave you a proper wedding present, so here it is.”
“Oh, Matt!”
Still on her toes, she cupped his face in her hands and gave his mouth a quick, joyful kiss before she dashed out the back door into the rainy darkness. Light from the lamp in the kitchen spilled over the porch and wagon. He followed her out and hoped the water sloshing through his toes would douse the fire raging in his gut.
One glimpse and he knew that would never happen. The rain had all but made the foggy nightgown vanish. She ran down the steps and climbed onto the wagon. Her pink nether cheeks flashed at him when he plodded through the mud behind her.
“This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” she said.
She ran her fingertips along the curved copper edge and shot him a grin, then lifted the hem of her sodden gown to step into the tub.
As she settled into it, the rainwater crept up her ribs and floated her breasts. They made him think of lily pads in a pond with pink flowers ripe and blooming at the tips.
“There’s room for two.”
If she hadn’t reached for him he might have had better sense. But those pretty bare arms dripping water and welcome had him slipping in beneath her.
He lifted her, spreading his fingers around her ribs and straddling her across his hips. Storm water as a bath wasn’t as cold as a body would have thought.
“I’ve been doing some thinking, Matt.”
Matt wasn’t thinking. How could a blessed coherent thought enter a man’s mind when his wife’s exposed breasts came level with his eyes? The world and all its worries spun away so that the only reality was that plump bosom with a pair of pink nipples twisting up with the cold.
He trailed his fingers over wet gauze and hot flesh.
The ends of her hair floated on top of the water, curling between them.
Emma sighed. Her breath touched his lips. He had only to lean forward an inch or two to capture the tip of a blushing pink breast in his mouth, so he did. Surely heaven was more than a reward at the end of life’s road. Emma tasted like paradise.
“That’s what I’ve been thinking about.” Her voice grew husky brushing across his hair and over his ear.
“You’ve got a fine mind, Emma.”
“I think we ought to…” Her sigh rumbled under his hands. “I’d like to…” He pressed