She twirled and stormed to the house, coming just short of slamming the door behind her.
He should have been smiling, but he couldn’t. Though the encounter had been a triumph in terms of making Louise think he was a boorish lout, he’d hit upon a disturbing discovery while kissing her. His heart wasn’t so invulnerable after all.
At least, not to one particular woman.
“What is all this for?” Louise asked.
In the short amount of time it had taken her to feed the chickens and gather the few eggs available, Caleb had transformed the kitchen from its post-breakfast mess to a sparkling clean place to take a bath. The table had been pushed back, and in its place was a large washtub, half-filled.
“I thought you might like a bath,” Caleb announced as she stood staring in wonder at the light fog created by the steam from the water he had been heating on the stove.
“A bath? At nine in the morning? The idea’s too decadent even to consider.”
There was no masking the disappointment on Cal’s face. “I thought after all the work you’d done for us…”
“Work!” she cried, nearly dropping her egg basket. “You’ve hardly allowed me to get myself dirty enough to need a bath!”
“Why, that’s crazy,” Caleb said as he tested the heating water on the stove with his finger. Deciding it was ready, he hauled it over to the tub and poured it in. “Didn’t you practically cook dinner single-handed last night?”
She had single-handedly warmed up the remains of the feast Caleb had prepared the night before. But he had prepared the fresh corn bread, and done most of the scrubbing up afterward, refusing to let her lift a finger. In fact, this bath seemed just another way for Caleb to show that he intended to wait on her hand and foot. Which made her wonder what the purpose in dragging her all the way out here was.
“Caleb, I couldn’t,” she insisted. “There’s so much else I could be doing.”
He shook his head. “Not in the house, ma’am,” he said flatly. “I’ve seen to most everything there is to tend to. Ty’s mending a rail on the pen out by the barn, so I thought I’d go help him for a while, if that’s all right with you.”
All right with her? Compared with his brother’s rude behavior, the young man’s kindness nearly brought tears to her eyes. He was so obviously trying to make up for his brother’s brutish manner.
“All right, Caleb,” she answered finally, giving in. “Since you’ve gone to all this trouble.”
He smiled joyfully. “It was no trouble, Miss Livingston.”
She couldn’t help grinning back. “Caleb, I certainly think you can call me Louise now. I can’t remember the last time I’ve had such a nice surprise as this.”
He beamed with satisfaction with her words, then dashed out to get some more water to add to the scalding hot water already in the tub. In a few minutes, he had her outfitted with soap, a towel for drying, even an extra bucket of warm water to rinse her hair with. All that was left for Louise to do was strip and jump in the water while it was still warm.
After cautiously making sure that there was absolutely no one in sight when Caleb had gone to join his brother, she sank into the tub and let out a long, languorous sigh. She couldn’t remember the last time she had had a bath in the middle of the day. Or had so little to occupy her. The day before, she’d practically done battle with Caleb to find some use for herself. The man was a whirlwind of activity, yet he worried that she was wearing herself out, though she had insisted many times that nothing could be further from the truth. The only thing wearing her out these days was worry.
After years of nonstop labor, being at loose ends for ever a day was rather like having a rug pulled out from under her feet. She felt fretful about what was going on at home Was Sally doing all right, or was she still moping? Toby she felt surer about, except that he was liable to spend his days dreaming of gold instead of history and mathematics Usually she could count on Sally to keep Toby somewha in check, but these days, with her youthful thoughts all centered around Ty Saunders…
Louise found Ty consuming all her thoughts, as well Since mauling her two nights ago, he had left her alone but unfortunately, the memory of his kiss still plagued he even if he didn’t. Merely thinking of the way his lips had felt against hers made her heart flutter and her insides turn to liquid, and remembering how she had reacted—how her arms had held him fast, the little contented sigh she had heard coming from her own throat—those recollections made her go scarlet with shame!
Picking up the soap, she began scrubbing her limbs with a fierce vigor. When it came to Ty Saunders, she was as bad as Sally! Worse, perhaps. Sally had youth as an excuse and inexperience. Though she herself had never been engaged, or even lost her heart to a man, Toby was right. She had had a few flirtations in her day. Not only that, she had definitely had the experience of Ty Saunders’s charms…and had resisted them. Thank heavens!
Though ten months ago she hadn’t been interested in having a romance, much less a romance with a man like Ty Saunders, it hadn’t escaped her notice that he had neve gone too far out of his way to pursue her after her one paltry little rebuff. A different man, a more serious minded man, might have persisted, might have at least tried to woo her a little bit. Why, even Niles Swaggart had more persistence than Ty Saunders, and she hadn’t given that man the least bit of encouragement, and had certainly never kissed him. The very idea made her shiver, as if the water around her had turned to ice.
Remembering Ty’s kiss made her shiver, too, but for a very different reason. It took all her might not to give in to the urge to simply ease down into the soothing water and daydream the morning away, reliving every brief second that he had held her in his arms. Or every word they had spoken, or each look they had ever exchanged.
Louise was startled by the sound of footsteps outside, which were rapidly becoming louder as the person approached. It had to be Caleb, which meant that she had probably been soaking longer than was necessary. Sure enough, she looked down and saw prunelike wrinkles on her fingers, and suddenly became aware of the water that had grown tepid around her. How embarrassing! Caleb was going to think that she was the worst sort of laze-about!
Fast as she could, she sluiced the bucket of rinse water over her head, then stood, reaching for the towel that Cal had given her. She was just done covering herself when she suddenly heard boots clumping up the back stairs. The kitchen door flew open.
“Oh!” she exclaimed in surprise.
But it wasn’t Caleb who stood in front of her, stock-still, his eyes round with shock at being confronted with a dripping wet, nearly naked woman. It was Ty.
Louise froze in mortification. Though the generous towel covered most parts of her that Wilbur Abernathy and every other civilized person in the Western world would have deemed indecent, Louise felt distinctly as if she were standing nude in the middle of the kitchen. At first the cool morning air that had come in when Ty opened the door sent a chill through her, but her limbs continued to tremble long after he had closed the door and stood staring at her in silence. In fact, the longer they continued their speechless standoff, the more she quaked.
If only he wouldn’t look at her so thoroughly! His steely gray eyes kept raking up and down her body, from her calves immersed in water up past her knees and thighs to her towel-clad torso, to her face, which was framed by her wet hair. What a sight she must be, though a gentleman would certainly have turned his back at the very least, and preferably left the room altogether!
That was just the problem. Ty Saunders had the