A Lawman's Christmas_ A McKettricks of Texas Novel - Linda Lael Miller [52]
“Gosh,” Clay said, playing the rube. “Thanks.”
“I would do anything for my daughters!” she blurted out. “Including marry a virtual stranger. I agreed to this arrangement because of them, not out of any desire to be your…your wife….” She stammered to a halt and turned a glorious shade of primrose-pink.
Clay waited a few moments before he spoke again. “That was quite a scene Maddox made today.”
Dara Rose hesitated, trembled once and hugged herself as if she thought she might suddenly scatter in every direction, and it was all Clay could do not to cross the room and take her into his arms. “I suppose he believed he had call to object to—to our getting married,” she continued, after a few moments of miserable struggle, “and it’s true enough that he proposed—sort of.”
“Sort of?” He’d known about the situation between Dara Rose and Maddox from Ponder and the others, but he wanted to hear it directly from her.
It was a long time before she answered. “I was supposed to work as his housekeeper for a year, so he could be sure I’d make a suitable wife. Then, if I passed muster, he’d put a ring on my finger.”
Clay felt a fresh surge of rage rise up within him, and he waited for it to subside before he said anything. “Where did Edrina and Harriet fit into all this?”
He knew the answer to that question, too, at least indirectly but, again, he wanted the first-hand truth from Dara Rose herself.
Her eyes welled, but she looked so proud and so vulnerable that Clay continued to keep his distance. He figured she might actually shatter into bits if he touched her.
“They didn’t,” she said, at long last. Then, speaking so softly that Clay barely heard her, she went on. “He wanted me to put my children in an orphanage, or send them out to work for their board and room.”
That was when Clay took a chance. He held his arms out to her.
Dara Rose paused briefly, considering, and then moved slowly into his embrace.
Clay rested his chin on top of her head. “No matter how things turn out between you and me, Dara Rose,” he told her, “you will never have to send your girls away, I promise you that.”
She looked up at him, her eyes moist, though she still wouldn’t allow tears to fall. “How can you make a promise like that, Clay?” she whispered brokenly. “How?”
At least she hadn’t called him “Mr. McKettrick.” Wasn’t that progress?
“I just did make a promise like that,” he replied, wanting to kiss her more than he’d ever wanted to kiss a woman before, and still unwilling to take the chance, “and you’ll find that I’m a man of my word.”
She blinked. “There’s so much you don’t know about me,” she said.
He grinned, holding her loosely, with his hands clasped behind the small of her back. “There are, as it happens, a few things you don’t know about me,” he replied. “I didn’t come to Blue River to work as the town marshal for the rest of my life, for one. I mean to be a rancher, Dara Rose—I come from a family of them. That’s why I bought two thousand acres of good grazing land, and that’s why I plan to build a house on the site we visited today.”
“And that’s why you wanted a wife,” she said, almost forlornly.
“Not just any wife,” he pointed out.
“Parnell and I—” She looked at the large likeness on the wall. And suddenly, she choked up again. Couldn’t seem to go on.
“It’s all right, Dara Rose,” Clay said, kissing her lightly on her crown, where her silken hair parted. She smelled sweetly of rainwater and flowery soap. “We’ve both got stories to tell, but it doesn’t have to happen tonight.”
She sniffled, smiled bravely, but otherwise she gave no response.
“Exactly why did you come out here in the first place?” Clay asked.
Dara Rose looked flustered. “I forgot to feed the chickens,” she said. “And I was hoping you’d be asleep so I could sneak past.”
Clay chuckled. “Well, I have to admit, that’s some thing of a disappointment.”
“I never forget to feed the chickens,” Dara Rose fretted, chagrined. “The poor things—”
“I fed them, Dara Rose,” Clay said.
“When?”
“Before we went