Chapter Sixteen
Hope stared at Jackson’s rigid shoulders bunched up around his ears and his white knuckles gripping the reins, and knew he was lying either to her, himself, or both of them about not being concerned.
She had spent enough years having Daniel smile in her face while lying through his teeth about the money he’d wasted on gambling, or buying cheap whiskey instead of food, and especially about the gang he’d worked for.
She could recognize the signs of a lie anywhere, especially when Jackson was completely useless at it.
She didn’t believe the man possessed a dishonest bone in his body, which was obviously why he usually resorted to not saying anything.
The rest of the journey progressed in silence, and Hope assumed that was how the rest of the day would go, too. So she was stunned when Jackson walked into the kitchen for dinner and hung his hat on the door.
“Smells good,” he said, rolling down his sleeves after washing up. “Stew?”
“With fresh vegetables from your ma’s garden,” Hope confirmed, pulling out a second bowl. “I wonder if she’s joining us this evening.”
Margaret usually ate with Hope or the other way around, whereas Jackson would come in later and help himself.
“Ma said she’d cook for herself tonight,” Jackson replied. “It’s just the two of us.”
Hope nodded, trying to keep her surprise from showing. Jackson wore a small smile, looking like he was up to something. She tried to focus on what she was doing instead of his presence. When she turned to put their bowls on the table, there was a small brown paper parcel in front of her seat.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“It’s just something small,” Jackson said with a shrug.
He mumbled a blessing over the food before Hope had even closed her eyes, and then tucked in without saying another word. As she picked up the parcel and slowly pulled the hessian string, she saw Jackson discreetly dart little looks her way.
As soon as the paper opened slightly, the scent of vanilla wafted into the air, and Hope squealed with genuine delight. She picked up the package of vanilla beans and held them to her chest, giving Jackson a look of surprise.
He looked uncomfortable, even shy, his eyes briefly flicking to hers. “I saw you admiring them in the store,” he finally said.
Hope knew he had been acting strange at the general store.
She thought it was just because Howard had brought up all the ranchers and their broken fences, but Jackson had been up to something else.
The thought he’d put into getting her something he knew she’d like, and keeping it a surprise, really touched her.
“Oh, Jackson,” she whispered, “thank you! I’ve always wanted to bake a real vanilla cake. You have no idea what this means to me!”
Jackson laughed and shook his head, as if to dismiss her praise.
“It’s a selfish gift, really,” Jackson said.
Hope frowned at him in confusion.
“I’ve always wanted to taste a real vanilla cake,” he said sheepishly.
Hope laughed at that. “Well, you have yourself a deal. This Sunday, we’ll have cake!”
Jackson continued eating his stew, and Hope couldn’t help but feel that the atmosphere between them had lifted slightly.
“What is it?” he asked suddenly.
Hope’s eyes widened, and she shoved a spoonful of stew into her mouth.
“I can tell you want to ask me something,” Jackson said with a raised eyebrow. “I get this burning sensation in the back of my head every time as if you’re trying to read my mind.”
Hope chuckled when she realized he was only teasing. She had dozens of questions for him, but one was more pressing than the others.
“Why did Sheriff Grady say you weren’t the sheriff anymore?” Hope began.
Jackson immediately tensed at the question. He sighed, stood up, and poured them each a finger of whiskey. After taking a sip, he looked at her and said, “I used to be a lawman. I was a sheriff in Virginia City, to be exact.”
Hope tried to take this in. Jackson had the forthright nature and quiet authority when handling problems that she believed a sheriff would have, but his reserved nature seemed to her more suited to the isolated slopes of Madison Valley.
“Why did you leave the job?” Hope decided to ask the obvious question.
Jackson took another sip of his whiskey and sighed. “There was no one else to do the job, so I was made sheriff at a very young age. At first, I enjoyed it,” Jackson said, though his smile faded quickly. “But it was difficult making the right decisions under pressure.”
“I think you do well at that,” Hope pointed out. “Your quick thinking saved me, after all.”
Jackson didn’t comment. She could tell by the lines across his forehead and around his mouth that talking about his years as a lawman was not easy for him. She appreciated his willingness to open up, and wondered what she could say to encourage him to go on.
“A few years ago, cattle and horses started going missing across some of the ranches,” Jackson continued, his gaze distant.
“I investigated as best I could, and a reliable source directed me to two thieves. They were practically still boys,” Jackson relayed, his expression stony.
“I tracked them down, and everything seemed to point to them.”
Hope could see that he was visibly struggling to tell the story.
In the long pauses, her mind filled in all the gaps with imagined scenarios involving Sheriff Hale and a pair of cattle thieves.
Jackson spoke again, cutting through her images of him on a horse wearing the brass star she’d seen in the box upstairs.
“At the end of it all, I made the wrong call, Hope, and two innocent people paid the price,” Jackson continued, his voice gruff and his expression grave. “I couldn’t face the town after that. I think it broke my resolve to be a lawman.”
Hope wanted to reach out and hold his hand tightly in hers, but she felt her touch might startle him out of the moment.
Jackson was only a few inches away from her, but mentally he was isolated in his painful memories.
She knew that there were details he had chosen not to share, but perhaps, in time, he would trust her with those too.
“We all make mistakes,” she said gently to break the silence that had stretched between them.
“But my mistakes affected other people,” Jackson said, a crack in his voice. He shook his head and pushed his bowl away from him. “My Pa got really sick after that, and it wasn’t long before he passed away. I used that as my reason to give up the law and return to ranching.”
“Do you regret it?” Hope asked.
Jackson shook his head. “I find peace in the quiet of the mountains and the wind whispering through the grass. Lives are still dependent on me, but sheep and cows don’t call on me to be a moral judge.”
Hope smiled warmly. “You’re so good with all the animals, but I think you’re the kind of man that would be good at anything he does.”
Jackson snorted with real amusement and he looked up at her, some of his former sadness fading. “I think the same of you, Hope. There’s not a horse or a cow that you’d be scared to tackle.”
It was strange hearing how Jackson saw her and how he had observed things she did not see in herself. After he had opened up to her, she felt the strong pull to do the same.
“I have my fears, too, Jackson,” she assured him. “There’s always a reason why a woman is desperate enough to answer an advertisement for a mail-order bride and travel hundreds of miles from her home.”
Jackson stared at her for a moment. “It must have been hard traveling all this way not knowing who you’d marry.”
“If I’m honest,” Hope said shyly, “when the mustached man led you over to me, I was very relieved to think you’d be my husband.”
Jackson blinked at her, and she could read the surprise in his eyes.
“I think all the women secretly hoped it was you,” Hope added with a little giggle that escaped accidentally.
She couldn’t be sure, but she thought Jackson’s cheeks colored a little.
He gulped the last of his whiskey and then loosened the bandana around his neck while guffawing awkwardly.
Hope looked around, desperate for a distraction.
Conversation had flowed so easily between them until she had brought up the boardinghouse.
“I’ll make some coffee,” she suggested, shooting up off her chair and filling a pot with water.
Hope made sure she made enough noise hauling an apple pie out of the oven and clattering dishes around in the sink that Jackson wouldn’t be able to say anything even if he’d wanted. Once the water started boiling, Hope was so flustered she picked the pot up without a cloth and burned her hand.
“Ouch!” she squeaked, dropping the pot and sloshing boiling water all over the stove and the floor.
“Hope!” Jackson said with alarm, leaping off his chair and reaching her in seconds. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine, really,” Hope said, her eyes filling with tears from the fright.
“You always say that,” he replied, holding her wrist gently in his hand and examining the red mark that blistered her skin. “Hope, sit.”
“Really, it’s not that painful,” she said, but she obeyed anyway as Jackson led her by the shoulders to the chair.
Feeling really embarrassed at her own silliness, Hope closed her eyes and bit down on her lip to stop the tears.
She felt Jackson’s hand gently ease her own into a bowl of cool water.
The chill instantly soothed her burn, while the warmth from Jackson holding her other hand in his calmed her nerves.
“Why do you always say you’re fine even when you’re hurt?” Jackson asked her, his voice low and accusing.
Hope shrugged. The truth was she didn’t know why it was always her first response. Perhaps it was because everyone else around her had always needed help first, and her needs had always seemed less important by comparison.
“I don’t want to cause anyone trouble,” Hope finally said when she realized Jackson was still waiting for an answer.
“You’re no trouble to me, Hope,” Jackson said, carefully raising her hand out of the water and inspecting her skin.
She was painfully aware that his lips were inches from her fingers, especially as he opened his mouth and gently blew on the burned skin to help dry the moisture.
“It’s better,” she assured him, tugging her hand away. But Jackson did not release her.
He set a small towel down on the tabletop so that she could rest her hand, and then produced a tin of yellow salve.
“Calendula,” she whispered with a smile. “Ma kept just such a tin in our pantry.”
Jackson smiled, nodded, and carefully applied the ointment to soothe the burn and help the skin heal.
Hope couldn’t remember the last time someone had tended to a wound of hers.
Probably when her Ma had tended to her head injury after being thrown from the horse.
After that, Hope had always looked after herself.
Jackson then produced a clean bandage, which he carefully wrapped around her hand.
“Is it too tight?” he asked, concern in his green eyes as he looked up at her.
She shook her head. What was it about Jackson that made him able to walk into a crowd of angry ranchers and command quiet respect, and at the same time carefully tend to her injury with a touch far more tender than her own?
“How does it feel?” Jackson asked, setting her injured hand down.
With her injury now dealt with, it was as though Hope and Jackson realized at the same time just how close they were sitting.
Jackson’s knees leaned against her own, and his hands were still touching hers.
She watched him tense and then release her as if she was a snake that had reared in readiness to strike.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, clambering off his chair and tripping over the bucket of wood next to the stove. “I’ll clean up the water. Why don’t you rest on the sofa?”
“I’m really fine, I promise-” Hope stopped when Jackson fired a silencing glare at her. She nodded and removed herself from the kitchen.
Her hand still tingled, but less from the burn than from the lingering sensation of Jackson’s touch.
He’d gone from being awkward and embarrassed to competently caring for her without the slightest inhibition in less than a second.
Hope couldn’t help but feel confused. Did Jackson merely feel a sense of responsibility for her as his wife, or was there more there?
Was he actually beginning to care for her?
She sat down on the sofa, her burnt hand in her lap as she listened to Jackson clanging pots and cups around trying to make coffee.
As Hope thought about everything that had just happened, she realized that it wasn’t just Jackson’s actions that were confusing her, it was her own.
Deep down she knew that she had enjoyed the attention from Jackson, enjoyed the movement of his lips as he had spoken to her, as well as the concern that flooded his green eyes.
Hope felt heat rise in her cheeks and chest and she stood up to try and escape it, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Jackson and how close he’d been, and how much she’d wanted to be close to him.
“Are you alright, Hope?” Jackson asked, standing uncertainly with a tray of coffee and apple pie balanced in one hand.
Hope opened her mouth to answer, but she felt as though Jackson could read her very thoughts. So she covered her face with her hands and fled from the room.