Paws scratched at her front door.
Wiping her cheeks with the backs of her hands, she sniffled one more time, then opened the front door.
“You ought to have stayed in the—”
Apparently Hey...Dog had no intention of sleeping on the porch because he trotted happily past her, his tail thumping her skirt in passing.
She closed the door against the frigid air rushing inside. If he meant to stay inside, there was really nothing she could do about it. It’s possible that he weighed more than she did.
“Well, what do you think?” Glancing about in the dark, she only imagined what the place was like or what might be in it.
To her relief, she did spot a chair. It was so big and comfortable-looking that a king might feel at home sitting upon it.
How thoughtful it was of the former owner to leave it behind. She would like to express her gratitude for the hay and the chair, but of course, she had no idea how to go about it.
For all that she thought she would not be able to sleep tonight, the chair seemed to open its arms and call her name. Perhaps she had become more worn down than she thought, running about getting ready for the move. Or perhaps it was simply a sense of security wrapping her up. Her own four walls saying, Welcome home...come and rest your soul.
She plopped down in the chair with a great sigh, loosened her hair and fluffed it out behind her.
The dog pressed his face close, licked a lingering teardrop from her cheek. With a soft woof, he sat on the floor. The weight of his head settled on her thigh. For as much as he resembled an extra-large wolf, he seemed to have a sweet and loyal spirit.
“You need a name of your own,” she said while twining her fingers in the thicket of gray-brown hair on his neck. “From now on, your name is Chisel because you chiseled your way into my house...and into my heart, you great hairy beast.”
He sighed, as though he was happy to finally be worthy of a name of his own. Actually, he might have sighed for many reasons, but she hoped it was that one. Shifting his weight, he lay down upon her feet. The warmth was welcome since it was shivering cold, even inside.
With everything the previous owners had left behind, they’d no doubt left firewood as well. Still, in the moment, she was too weary to go exploring.
Shrugging deeply into her coat, she felt her eyes grow heavy. As she did every night, she carried a vision of Johnny’s handsome face off to sleep with her.
Drifting on a sleepy daze, she imagined the sigh of his breath upon her cheek, the brush of his lips lightly grazing hers. He whispered her name and his voice sounded different. More tender and less demanding. The pitch was different, too, deeper. Compelling. She had to admit she liked the difference. Ordinarily, Johnny was bold, taking—or trying to take—what he wanted. In this dream, he wanted to give.
In her slumbering vision, she lifted her hand, trailed her fingers through the short whorls of his dark blond hair. Which was odd since Johnny had long dark hair. He smiled, and she felt a yearning for him to her very soul. His olive green eyes gazed at her with more love than she’d ever felt before.
Olive green eyes! Laura Lee sat upright with a start. Johnny had deep brown eyes.
Could she have been...? No, she absolutely could not have been dreaming of the stranger from town whom she had met for one brief moment. Why would she?
What a faithless creature she was! Johnny had bought her a house! He was out...somewhere...working hard to pay off the mortgage.
She owed Johnny everything. And yet...the yearning for a stranger lingered in her heart.
How wicked she was. She deserved to shiver the night away wide awake. Ah, but the dog’s warmth crept up her ankles to her calves, then her knees.
She drifted back to sleep barely aware of wind hitting the window and making it rattle in its frame.
* * *
Could it truly be morning? It was hard to remember when she had slept so soundly, even at the Lucky Clover, where she’d felt safe for the first time in her life.
The ranch had been her first home really. She’d been given a small room of her own in the main house, the same as the rest of the unmarried girls. For many years, it had been her sanctuary.
Even though she had been happy, it had never been her dream to live at the Lucky Clover forever. Here, within her own walls, was where her heart always longed to be.
Like a veil being drawn from her eyes, the fog of sleep cleared from her brain. She bounded up from the chair she had slept in.
Everything she had not been able to see in the dark was now visible.
The chair was deep blue and the only piece of furniture in the room. As she’d suspected, there was a bedroom flanking each end of the main room. Behind the fireplace, she thought there might be a kitchen. If she was very lucky, and it appeared that so far she was, there would be a stove so that she could cook her pastries for Friday.
Skipping because there was no one to witness her acting like a loon, she passed through the main room to the area behind the fireplace.
To the right was a table with one chair and to the right of the table was a stairway that led to... She lifted up onto her toes trying to see. There was no way of knowing without climbing the steep stairs, but she thought the space might be a loft.
When she and Johnny had children, the boys could sleep up there. She could nearly see them peeking over the edge, their eyes green and—no, no, no! Brown eyes, warm and happy like their father, peering over the edge.
She shook herself. Perhaps she was still more sleepy than she realized. When she was wide awake, she would no longer recall the dream or how the man had made her feel so cherished.
Spinning left, she was grateful to see a kitchen with a wood-burning stove. As though in a deliriously happy fog, she moved toward the black-iron beauty that had six burners and an oven.
“Hurry home, Johnny! I need to give you a kiss.” And after they’d been to the preacher... Well, she blushed right there in her own sweet kitchen just imagining the kisses they would share.
Chisel, whining at the front door, snapped her to the here and now, which was a wonderful place to be.
“It looks like rain,” she announced, opening the front door. He bunched his legs, then leaped from the porch without touching the stairs. He raced across the yard, over the bridge and through an autumn-brown meadow.
He must be claiming the land as his, the same as she was claiming the house.
And what better way to do it than to explore the loft, then to clean the grime off the windows? After that, with a fire crackling in the fireplace, she would sit in her chair and sew her curtains.
If life could be any better, she could not imagine how.
* * *
If life could be any better, Jesse Creed could not imagine how. Sitting beside the campfire, he could smell his horses, hear them snorting and shuffling their hooves in the dirt.
After a week and a half on the homeward-bound trail, they would soon be grazing in their home pastures. It would take until after dark to get there. They might even encounter some rain. Where he was, it was clear overheard, but far off to the west, clouds were massing.
Rain or not, he didn’t care. All he wanted was to be home.
During the time he’d been gone, he’d seen more of the outside world than he wanted to. There had been no way to ignore tainted reality since he’d been constantly dragging Bingham away from this or