a lingering kiss on the wet skin over her heart. It made her clamp her thighs where they straddled his lap. “Even if it’s only for a little while.”
“It doesn’t have to be for a little while… . Come with me, Emma…come to California.”
Emma stiffened against him. “You can’t mean that. I just got a home of my own… . It’s everything I ever wanted.”
He’d asked too much of her. Already her skin had begun to cool under his hands. A shiver stole over her flesh.
“I’ve come to care for you a great deal.” She blinked away the rain slicing down her face. “We could have this for a little while.”
“I’ve come to care for you, too, darlin’. That’s why I’m getting up out of this tub.” He did it, too. He slid out from under her and stood near the wagon wheel gazing down, stuffing his heart back into his chest.
Emma needed a man who would stay here and make her dreams come true.
According to Billy, she needed Woody Vance.
Chapter Eight
Sitting on her own front porch with her head in the shade and the afternoon sunshine warming her feet was a delight. She could not have been more content…or distressed.
Confusion had her missing the final stitches in the party dress she had spent hours by lamplight sewing for Lucy.
Hadn’t it been said that home is where the heart is? That being true, Emma was home. The boards creaking under her rocking chair, the rustle of the prairie grass blowing clear to the horizon and Pearl’s happy whinny from the corral told Emma that this was where her heart would always be.
What had come over Matt, asking her to leave it all behind?
How could he make her feel like a thousand Fourth of July fireworks going off at once, lick her very private flesh, making her all soft and drippy, only to get out of the tub and walk away? Oh, how she’d like to shake him, or stick him with this needle, or kiss him until he couldn’t think.
It was a fortunate thing for Matthew Suede that he was far away mending fences at this moment.
“Ouch!” Emma sucked a drop of blood welling up from her finger and tried to clear her head. Woolgathering over things that could never be would end only in heartache or poked fingers.
Truly, the thing she wanted most was right here under her feet. After Matt and his gang moved on, it would still be here, her own place in the world.
Emma paid strict attention to the last foot of hem to be stitched. She cut the thread and put the needle into the sewing box.
“Lucy!” she called. “Come and try on your new dress.”
When she received no answer she folded the yellow-and-pink fabric across her arm and went in search of her. Lucy was not allowed to wander farther than the creek, so Emma walked that way.
She stopped at the corral.
“Hello, Pearl.” She stroked the horse’s long jaw. “Did you hear where that little pixie and Red got to?”
A snort and a nuzzle to the ribs didn’t tell her much, but Lucy liked the barn. More than once she’d found the child asleep on a fresh pile of straw with her pups curled around her.
The inside of the barn was dim and somewhat cooler than it was outside. Until the trees she’d planted all around her property grew, the shade of the barn would be a rare treat.
Chickens scratched in the hay and birds twittered in the rafters, but otherwise the barn was silent with no lingering laughter or puppy yaps to indicate that Lucy had come inside.
Here in the barn, life was tranquil. Emma hated to leave the cool shelter and walk all the way to the creek in the harsh sunshine.
She sat on a bale of straw. It wouldn’t hurt to take a moment to sit, to listen to the quiet sound of her breathing, let it slow down and make her peaceful inside. She closed her eyes, she breathed, she felt the soothing beat of her heart.
Life slowed to one perfect moment until… “Funny place for a nap, darlin’.”
She had to open her eyes. She could hardly pretend he wasn’t standing in her barn.
Mercy, she should not have opened her eyes. She ought to have gotten up and walked out of the barn without looking at him.
How could she have known Matt would be standing nearly over her stripped down to his jeans? Her gaze wandered up his denims. It