Chapter 11 #3
Morgan’s nod was almost imperceptible. He picked up his hat. “I’ll be going. I have to find Jane.”
Reaching across the table suddenly, Ida Mae Sterling caught the sleeve of Morgan’s coat. “What’s going on, Morgan?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m getting the impression you don’t like her out of your sight.”
“She was here with you the entire time I was picking up supplies and listening to Ted Rush talk about the time he almost got lost in the blizzard of ’86. That means she was out of my sight.”
Mrs. Sterling released his coat and sat back. “I said it was an impression, didn’t I?” She looked him over as he put on his hat. “You’d tell me if there was something to worry about, wouldn’t you?”
Morgan walked around the table, bent, and kissed her on the cheek. “Dear Ida Mae, you would be the very last person I would tell.”
“Humph.”
Smiling, he gave her shoulder a squeeze. “You’re my family, Ida Mae.” And then he left.
* * *
Jane emerged from Mrs. Garvin’s shop carrying a parcel containing material, thread, and a skirt pattern that Mrs. Garvin made especially for her.
Her attention was drawn inward as her mind leaped ahead to laying out the material, pinning the pattern, and cutting the fabric.
She was not looking where she was going.
She walked right into the stranger.
“Oh! I am so sorry.” Jane smiled apologetically as she bent to pick up her parcel.
“No, ma’am. Allow me.” He stooped and slipped two fingers under the string that held the parcel together. He held it up as he straightened but did not precisely hand it over.
“Thank you,” said Jane. “You are very kind. I’ll take it now.”
“Let me carry it for you. Where are you going?”
“I am on my way to meet my husband. I believe he has been delayed at the hardware store.” She held out her hand. “I’ll have it back, please.”
“It’s no bother.”
“I understand. I would still like to carry it myself.”
Smiling, he gave it over. “You’re Mrs. Longstreet.
” When Jane nodded, he lifted his hat, revealing a thick helmet of brown hair that was only a shade lighter than his heavy mustache.
“I thought that was you with Morgan earlier. ’Course, who else would it be?
You were coming out of the bank, I believe. ”
“Yes.” She frowned slightly, trying to place his face.
He was thin, with sharp, angular features, and stood perhaps an inch taller than she.
His eyes were brown. He had a narrow way of looking out on the world, a slight squint that had carved permanent lines at the corners of his eyes.
“I am afraid I do not remember your name. Were we introduced at the reception? There were so many people there. It was overwhelming.”
“That’s how I remember it, ma’am. And let me say again, congratulations. Morgan Longstreet is a good man. A lucky one also.”
“Lucky?”
“Morgan and I go back a ways. I wouldn’t be so bold as to say this if we didn’t. I meant that he was lucky for getting himself a wife as fine as you.”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” she said modestly. She averted her eyes and gazed off in the direction of Ted Rush’s hardware store. “I have to go. Thank you again.”
He turned when she started off, but he did not follow her. “You don’t want to go to the hardware, Mrs. Longstreet.”
Jane’s steps slowed, then stopped. She looked back over her shoulder. “I don’t?”
“No, ma’am. I saw Morgan going up the steps to the Pennyroyal not long before we met head-on. I said ‘howdy,’ but I don’t think he heard me. Seemed as if he was in a bit of a hurry.”
“Thank you. I better go, then.” She picked up her pace, and when she reached the corner, she glanced back, this time with no prompting other than her own curiosity. The stranger was gone.
* * *
Morgan gave Jane a blanket to place over her lap after she was seated in the buckboard.
He helped her tuck it in before he snapped a tarp over the supplies in the back of the wagon.
Snowflakes dotted the tarp like random chalk marks on a slate.
He did not try to brush them off. He climbed onto the buckboard and took up the reins.
Before he snapped them, he raised his hand in a goodbye salute to Walt Mangold, who was loitering on the Pennyroyal’s front porch.
Jane also lifted her hand to Walt. When he smiled back at her, she felt a little warmer and better protected from the chill emanating from Morgan.
She waited until the wagon was rolling before she spoke.
“I wish you would not have been so obviously out of sorts with me in front of Walt. You made him uncomfortable. He does not know you very well. I think you made him worried for me.”
Morgan stared straight ahead. “Are you worried for you?”
“No. I don’t think you are going to beat me.”
“Well, that’s something.”
“I do think you might not tell me why you are upset. You do that, you know. Not tell me things.”
“It’s disturbing to me that you don’t know what’s bothering me.”
“I’m sorry. But I don’t.”
“I left you at the Pennyroyal with Ida Mae. We agreed you would stay with her while I went to the hardware. I expected you to be there when I arrived. You weren’t.
You went off on your own like you did that time when I brought you to church.
It wasn’t what was supposed to happen, so yes, I’m out of sorts with you.
Should I have said all of that in front of Walt? ”
Jane’s short sigh was lost in the lift of the wind.
A snowflake caught in her eyelashes. She brushed it away.
“This is where we differ, Morgan. You think there was agreement because I did not quarrel with you about keeping company with Mrs. Sterling while you went about your business. You took my silence for consent, but to be clear, there was no discussion. When I thought your trip to the hardware store was taking overlong, I decided I would go to Mrs. Garvin’s shop.
Had I not been delayed by one of your friends, you still would have been eating Mrs. Sterling’s cookies when I arrived.
It was no pleasure seeing you standing on the porch as I crossed the street, not with that severely disapproving look on your face.
Please take note, I crossed the street anyway. ”
Morgan did not have to look at her. He knew her chin was up. So were her hackles. Absurdly, the first thing he said after taking it all in was, “How did you know I was eating cookies?”
Jane slipped one hand out from under the blanket and touched the corner of his mouth with a gloved fingertip. “Crumbs.” She flicked them away.
He caught her by the wrist, turned her hand, and lifted her knuckles to his lips. He pressed a kiss against them before he released her. “When I bring you to Bitter Springs, Jane, I need to have you at my side or know where you are.”
“Why?”
“Because…” He shook his head. “Humor me.” After a moment, he added, “Please.”
Jane did not return her hand to the warmth of the blanket. She slipped it into the crook of Morgan’s arm instead and moved closer. “It was the ‘please’ that decided me. Remember that.”
* * *
Morgan did. That evening, in bed, he did. “Please,” he said. “You say it this time. Say ‘please.’ ”
Jane’s lips parted around the word she was desperate to say, but he cut her off by nuzzling her mouth with his. She was already maddened by his kisses, teased to the point of near mindlessness, and he was saying “please.”
He growled it in her ear the first time he had said it.
His teeth nibbled on her lobe and the huskiness in his voice tickled her.
He whispered it against the curve of her neck just before he sipped on her skin, and then later when he was on the point of taking her nipple into her mouth.
He rolled it between his lips, flicked it with the damp edge of his tongue.
“Humor me,” he said when he placed his mouth against her belly.
“Please.” That soft puff of air made her abdomen retract.
His voice was silken against the inside of her elbow and the underside of her wrist. He said the word before he began raising her nightgown, and he said it again when his fingers slipped between her naked thighs.
Sometimes she did things without any encouragement from him.
Sometimes anticipation was enough to move her.
His mouth circled her navel and then dipped below it.
Her thighs parted. She raised her knees and he was lifting them over his shoulders so her calves rested against his back.
She could not recall if he had said “please” then.
She was beyond caring. She pressed her forearm across her eyes the first time he set his mouth against her warmth and wetness of these other lips.
She was all sensation and the darkness helped her seize control of it.
She listened to her breathing and the sound of blood thrumming in her ears.
She felt her heart beat a rapid tattoo against her chest. Every stroke of his tongue was a lick of fire.
Her fingers curled into fists. There was a word lodged in her throat, and when the sharp pleasure of his intimate caress was just this side of unbearable, she set it free.
“Please!”
He pushed her over the precipice and she was grateful for the long fall and the soft landing. Her body shuddered, every contraction a sweet one. Pleasure lingered. It seemed to Jane it filled her very pores. A sigh hummed through her as Morgan stirred.
Jane uncovered her eyes in time to see him emerge from under the covers, his thick ginger hair endearingly mussed, a cunning and vaguely smug grin on his face.
“You are a wicked man, Morgan Longstreet.” She noticed that he was not offended.
If anything, it became more evident that his smile was smug.
Except to lay her hands on his shoulders, Jane barely moved as he entered her.
She waited until he was seated and then she contracted around him, folding like the petals of a flower around a drop of dew.