Dance Away with Me - Susan Elizabeth Phillips Page 0,123
quickly turned to concern. “Your hand . . .”
“It’s not that bad.”
“Bad enough.” Her forehead wrinkled. “The first aid kit is at the schoolhouse.”
He hated all her back-and-forth from the cabin to the schoolhouse. He needed her to stay put. With him. Where she belonged. “We’re going up there.” He pretended not to notice her hesitation and grabbed the diaper bag and Wren’s nest. “We’re leaving.”
Maybe she wanted to get away from the cabin as much as he did because she didn’t argue.
When they reached the schoolhouse, she made him check all the doors and windows, something he suspected she’d be doing for a long time. He retrieved the first aid kit and set it on the table, then washed his hands at the sink. It stung like hell. The wound wasn’t long, but it was deep, and it started to bleed again.
She couldn’t tend to him and hold the baby at the same time, but she couldn’t seem to put her down. He understood and took Wren from her. The baby stirred, opened her eyes, saw him, and closed them again.
He sat at the table, Wren in his free arm, and while Tess bandaged him up, he filled her in on everything that had happened. She inspected the final dressing. “I want to kill Eli, but . . .”
“I know.”
“Do you think Paul will hurt him?”
Ian considered how his survivalist neighbor was both different and similar to himself. “No. He loves his kid and his wife. He’s just stubborn and paranoid.”
“I’ll check on them tomorrow.”
“Of course, you will. I’m also sure you’ll be checking on Savannah and her baby. Then there’s Kelly and Ava. I wouldn’t be half-surprised if you went to see Winchester, too, just to lecture him.”
“The busybody of Tempest, Tennessee.”
“You’ve got a big heart, Tess Hartsong.”
Even as he said it, the uneasiness he couldn’t shake made him turn away.
* * *
She and Ian slept together that night, with Wren next to the bed, neither of them willing to let her out of sight. Wren didn’t awaken until a little after five. Tess pried her eyes open far enough to see that Ian had slipped away. As always.
She pulled the baby and her leaky diaper out of the sleeper and curled her to her chest. Wren didn’t seem to have suffered from yesterday’s episode, but Tess couldn’t say the same. “I’m glad you’re perky,” she told her, “because I’m a wreck.”
Wren was unusually alert that morning. After her feeding she looked at Tess as if to ask what Mom had planned for their entertainment that day. Tess dressed them both, put Wren into her sling, and stepped into a beautiful mountain morning.
She found Ian at the abandoned church. Ignoring his injured hand, he was using the lintel over the doorway to perform a series of punishing pull-ups. His T-shirt lay on the ground next to him. The man couldn’t seem to keep his clothes on.
She watched the contraction of muscles across his shoulders, the long extension in his spine. His legs stayed straight and strong as he raised and lowered himself. Judging by his sweaty back, he’d been working out for a while. She wanted to remember him like this. Rumpled and sweaty, strong and decent, in the wild where he belonged.
Wren was beginning to experiment with her voice, and she screeched. He dropped to the ground. “Ladies.”
She watched as he picked up the T-shirt and rubbed it across his damp chest. “Thank you,” she said.
“For?”
“I could have lost her yesterday.”
“We could have lost her.”
“Of course, but—”
“She’s mine, too, Tess. You keep forgetting that.”
“No, I— ”
“You keep forgetting a lot of things.” He yanked his T-shirt so roughly over his head it should have ripped.
“What put you in such a foul mood?”
“All these plans you have. These plans for yourself and for Wren.”
“I have to plan. I don’t see what—”
“Have you consulted me about any of these plans? Asked me how I feel about them? Whether I have plans of my own? Or have you just told me?”
Where had all this anger come from? “Whatever it is you’re trying to say, say it, because I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He came toward her. “I never hear the word we in your plans. I only hear I.”
“There isn’t a we.”
“We’re married, Tess.” The way he said it . . . With an unhappy twist at the corner of his mouth. “That might be old hat to you, but it’s not to me.”