A Lawman's Christmas_ A McKettricks of Texas Novel - Linda Lael Miller [40]
DARA ROSE MARCHED herself out into the kitchen, pumped cold water into the basin she kept on hand and splashed her face repeatedly while Harriet watched her solemnly from the doorway.
“Are you through crying, Mama?” the child asked, very softly.
Dara Rose felt ashamed. Now she’d upset Edrina and Harriet, and for what? A few moments of self-pity?
“I’m quite through,” she said, drying her still-puffy face with a dish towel. “And I haven’t the slightest idea what came over me.” She hugged Harriet, then frowned, looking around. “Where is Edrina?”
Harriet bit her lower lip, clearly reluctant to answer.
“Harriet?” Dara Rose said, taking her little girl gently but firmly by the shoulders. “Where is your sister?”
Harriet’s eyes were huge and luminous. “She went to fetch Mr. McKettrick,” she finally replied.
Alarm rushed through Dara Rose, and not just because a glance at the row of hooks beside the back door revealed that Edrina had gone off through the deep snow without her bonnet or her mittens. She was just reaching for her own cloak when she heard footsteps on the front porch—boots, stomping off snow.
Clay knocked, but then he came right in, carrying Edrina. His gaze locked with Dara Rose’s as he set the little girl down and pulled the door closed behind him.
She’d never seen a man look so worried before, not even when Parnell came to that settlement house in Bangor, Maine, to claim her and the children. They’d been mere babies then, Edrina and Harriet, and memories of their real father, Parnell’s younger brother, Luke, soon faded.
“Are you sick?” Clay demanded, in the same tone he might have employed to confront a drunk with disorderly conduct.
Dara Rose wasn’t sick, except with mortification. “I’m quite all right,” she said, but she didn’t sound very convincing, even to herself. She shifted her attention to her elder daughter, letting her know with a look that she was in big trouble. “I apologize for any inconvenience—”
Clay’s neck reddened, and his eyes narrowed. “I’d be obliged if you girls would wait in the kitchen,” he said, though he never looked away from Dara Rose’s face.
Edrina and Harriet, always ready with a protest when she made such a request, fled the room like rabbits with a fox on their trail.
“That little girl,” Clay said, in a furious whisper, one index finger jabbing in the general direction of the kitchen a few times, “was so worried about you that she braved all that snow to find me and bring me here. So don’t think for one minute that you’re going to put me off with an apology for any inconvenience.”
Dara Rose stared at him. “Why are you so angry?” she finally asked. And why does it thrill me to see you like this?
“I’m not angry,” Clay rasped out, wrenching off his Wyatt Earp–style hat and flinging it so that it landed on the settee, teetered there and dropped to the floor. “Damn it, Dara Rose, whatever went on here this morning scared your daughter half to death, and since Edrina is the most courageous kid I’ve ever come across, I got scared, too.”
The thrill didn’t subside, and Dara Rose prayed her feelings didn’t show. “I lost my composure for a moment,” she confessed, as stiffly proud as a Puritan even as her heart raced and her breath threatened to catch in the back of her throat and never come loose. “Believe me, I regret it. I certainly didn’t mean to frighten the children—”
“Well,” Clay said, in earnest, “you did. And I’m not leaving here until you tell me what Ponder said to you that made you go to pieces the way you did.”
Dara Rose swallowed, looked down at the floor. Right or wrong, Clay meant what he said—that much was obvious from his tone and his countenance. He wouldn’t be going anywhere until she answered him.
“Dara Rose?” He was standing close to her now, his hands resting lightly on her shoulders. He smelled of fresh air, snow and something woodsy. “Tell me.”
She knew she ought to pull away from him, ought to look anywhere but up into his face, but she couldn