Supper will be ready by the time you wash up.’’
Winter took a step back out the doorway. ‘‘I’ll only be a minute.’’
‘‘Win?’’
It was the first time she’d said his name, and he liked the way she used his nickname, as Logan and Cheyenne did. ‘‘Yes?’’ He waited.
‘‘The washstand’s ready in our room if you want to use it. I could bring you up clean clothes.’’
He started to say ‘‘don’t bother.’’ He could wash on the porch. She didn’t have to wait on him. But instead he
nodded, silently agreeing with her, and walked across the kitchen and up the stairs to the attic.
He took his time dressing, enjoying the room. When she’d suggested moving a bed up to the attic, he’d thought it was a fool idea, but now it seemed like home. She’d made some changes since he’d seen the room. A low shelf of books lined one wall between the north windows, and she’d made nightstands out of boxes. He noticed the books were all ones he’d read as a child. They started with his McGuffy Readers and went all the way to Mark Twain and Jules Verne.
Win smiled as he looked around. He could send to Dallas for a real bedroom set and buy leather-bound books finer than any in the study. The room could have all matching wood like they advertised in the Dallas paper with bookshelves as high as the rafters between each of the windows.
Surveying the room, he thought she sure didn’t look like a woman ready to pull up stakes. She’d even brought up the little writing desk the captain’s wife had in the sunroom. Kora had placed it in a corner so she could look out the windows in two directions.
He moved over to her dressing area and peeked behind the folding panel. Everything was in order. Her clothes, her comb, a perfume bottle. He moved closer and lifted the corner of the hankerchief she used to cover her dresser. Miss Allie had given him the fancy hankerchief one Christmas years ago, and he’d forgotten where he put it. Now it seemed to have found a home.
Kora’s soft footsteps only gave him a moment to move before she was on the landing.
‘‘I brought you clean clothes, but they’ve been mended several times. Would you mind it if I picked out a few new shirts for you the next time I’m in town?’’
‘‘I wouldn’t mind.’’ He took the shirt. ‘‘But I’ll be in town tomorrow for a meeting. Make a list and I’ll pick up anything you need.’’
Their words were natural, things any husband might say to any wife, but Winter was very much aware she didn’t think of him as truly her husband. He was just another way, like Adams, to survive. Every morning when he rode out, he wondered if she’d be waiting for him when he returned. Or would she load up her sister and brother and the few things they’d come with and leave? Could she swear never to return to him as easily as she had Andrew Adams?
The possibility had turned over in his mind again and again. He’d told himself that if she left he’d close the house and never open it or think of her again. But he knew he’d probably go after her. Something about this woman fit him as perfectly as kid leather. Just as he would have offered far more to get her to marry him than she’d thought, he’d do more to keep her than she might imagine.
They drifted through the meal with talk of the ranch. Cheyenne rapid-fired questions until he grew tired and declined dessert in favor of bed. Jamie had gone back to town with Dr. Gage when he’d visited that morning, and so the room seemed suddenly empty.
‘‘Would you like dessert on the porch?’’ Kora asked when Winter returned from helping Cheyenne up the stairs. ‘‘I made apple pie.’’
He followed her to the long porch running the length of the back of the house. They moved away from the side where the sunroom’s light shone across the porch. Dan sat in his room beside a half-eaten meal.
Kora hugged herself, as if cold, as she looked in on her brother. ‘‘He’ll start his night walk soon, then turn out the light. Sometimes he sleeps in the chair, sometimes in bed. Once in a while he even goes to the barn and curls up in the back of a wagon. But he’ll be up by dawn for his morning walk. If I don’t have his breakfast waiting for him when he returns, he won’t eat a thing until dark.’’
‘‘Has it always been like this?’’
‘‘Pretty much. I don’t remember what he was like at first. I was too young. He and Mother somehow worked out the pattern, and it hasn’t changed no matter where we move or what the weather. I’m not even sure he knows Mama died. During the day he takes his chair places to sit… usually where the least people are. I was surprised when he moved it upstairs to Cheyenne’s room.’’
‘‘What happened to him?’’
‘‘We have little idea. Mom said once he was just a boy when he left, and for a while he wrote of battle after battle. Then not a word for over a year. The man who brought him home said someone told him they just found him sitting in a battlefield among the bodies.’’
‘‘There are hospitals for people like him, Kora. Doctors who might help.’’ Winter sat on the porch railing and shoveled a large piece of warm apple pie into his mouth.
‘‘Would they have clean clothes laid out every morning in the same place where he left the dirty ones? Would they only feed him things he’ll eat like eggs and bread? Would they let him walk, never interrupting his path?’’
He couldn’t see her face, but he guessed the things she didn’t say and suddenly he was voicing them aloud. ‘‘Would they check on him every night? Would they put a log on the fire so it wouldn’t go out? Would they cover him with an extra blanket?’’ Winter set the pie down forgotten. ‘‘Would they kiss him good night in his sleep?’’
‘‘I don’t kiss him good night!’’ Kora snapped as she walked farther away from the window’s light.
Winter was suddenly angry. All the special attention he thought she was paying him was nothing more than she was doing for her war-scarred brother. She’d made the pie for him because she knew he loved apples. She laid out his clothes. She kept him warm.
He looked across the wide yard to the barn and bunkhouse. Several lights were still on. More than likely a few of his men were in the dark on the porch of the bunkhouse smoking one last cigarette before turning in for the night.
Glancing at Kora in the dim light, he knew this was not the place for private talk. Their voices could drift on the breeze too easily.
He leaned against the porch banister and pushed all emotion aside. ‘‘You said you wanted to talk to me?’’
Kora was as far away from him as the porch railing would allow.
‘‘If we’re to get through the next few months, you have to stop avoiding me,’’ she whispered.
‘‘What?’’
She moved a few feet closer. ‘‘I said, you’re avoiding me.’’
‘‘What?’’ he answered again.
‘‘You heard me,’’ she said as she came closer. ‘‘You’re not as deaf as Dan.’’
Winter smiled. ‘‘I’m glad you recognize some difference.’’
Kora was within three feet of him now. ‘‘Jamie says you’re sorry you married me with all the trouble over Andrew Adams, and you’re trying to ignore me away.’’
‘‘That doesn’t work.’’ Winter laughed. ‘‘If it did, Jamie would be weeks gone.’’ He unfolded his arms. ‘‘Are you aware you always call the man Andrew Adams?’’
‘‘Answer my question first,’’ she replied.
‘‘All right. No. I’m not avoiding you. I’ve got a lot of work to do. With spring comes a great deal of work on top of watching for sick cattle.’’ He knew even as he said the words that they were a lie not only to her, but to himself. He had been avoiding her. Not with much success. Logan always managed to find him and give him a rambling report of all she’d done. In the old man’s eyes, Kora was becoming a saint.
She moved to the railing a foot away from him now and stared out into the night. ‘‘Jamie says you don’t want to get used to me being around. She doesn’t know about our bargain, but she’s guessing.’’
‘‘Jamie’s only rattling,’’ Winter said, very much aware of her nearness. ‘‘I’m not much interested in what Jamie says.’’
Kora leaned on the railing, arching her back slightly. ‘‘I’ll try to be considerate.’’
Win was starting to hate that word.
The far-off sound of a horse and buggy chimed through the night. Winter slipped his arm around Kora’s waist as they both watched the darkness. There were a hundred things that needed saying between them, but the feel of
