world.”
“Are you saying a lifetime of loving isn’t worth the pain?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But it scares me.”
We said nothing else for a while as Goldie picked her way over the rocky trail. Gravity pulled me forward in the seat, a natural slide closer to John, and then I did the most daring thing imaginable.
I rested my cheek against his back.
My audacity shocked me, but I did not move my head. Just rested my ear against him, and listened to the steady beating of his heart, my fingers still interlaced in front of his ribs.
I held my breath, waiting to see how he would react. I wasn’t the only one full of surprises.
John placed a hand over mine, his calloused thumb rubbed across my knuckles; a comforting touch to be sure, but it also aroused feelings deep inside me. Feelings I’d been struggling to suppress for weeks.
My skin tingled. My heart was a trapped dove inside my chest, fluttering and flapping. Way down low, I felt a feminine stirring. A stirring that I could not name, but it was an overwhelming, primal force, urgent and demanding. I wanted to dance and sing and laugh and cry. I wanted to both praise God and do all manner of sin with this man.
But it was a tenuous thrill and I well and truly knew it. I would be no Ruthie, no matter how much I might want to lie down with John and give my body over to him. And it wasn’t because I was a good girl, although I usually tried hard to be one.
Rather, my restraint arose from the huge class chasm between us. He was a rich man at the top of the heap, the king of the Trans-Pecos, and I was nothing more than a maid at best. At worst, I was simply the pity-case daughter of a man who’d been killed in one of his mines. I understood my place in the world and it was not with a man like John Fant.
The problem was that with John dressed like a cowboy, the lines between us blurred. For a few minutes, it was easy to pretend that he was just a lonesome cowpoke, raised on the land, not so different from me. He even smelled familiar, like Jeff Davis County earth. Home. He smelled like home.
For a dangerous stretch of time, I foolishly let myself dream.
We rode like that for several minutes, not speaking, just being there together in the saddle.
“Millie,” he said after a while.
My eyes were closed and I was concentrating on listening to the beating of his heart and absorbing the heat from his body and marveling how good it felt to be so close to him. I knew this moment couldn’t last and I was milking it for everything it was worth. “Uh-huh.”
“I’ve made a decision.”
“About what?” I murmured.
“The mine.”
“Are you going to close it?”
“I’m going to repair the mine and keep it open.”
“Even though it will cost you more money than you can get back out of it?”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s the right thing to do.”
I squeezed him tight, letting him know how much that meant to me.
He chuckled. “Ease up a bit, I need to breathe.”
Embarrassed, I dropped my arms.
“You can still hang on,” he said. “Don’t want you to fall, Millipede.”
Millipede! He’d given me a nickname.
We were long past the rocky incline, on the flat ground of the valley floor; there was no need for me to keep hanging on tight, but I did it anyway. Sliding my arms around him, feeling his warmth seep through me all over again.
Millipede. He’d called me Millipede.
A grin spread over my face bigger than Texas. This was the most romantic thing that had ever happened to me.
But my grin quickly faded away. This was also the most wretched thing, because even though I could never say the words out loud, I realized something that my heart had known since that day on my daddy’s porch.
John Fant was my one true love and there was no way in the whole wide world that we could ever be together.
A FTER OUR HORSEBACK ride, I didn’t see John again for an entire month. By day, he filled my thoughts. By night, he ransacked my dreams and
“Are you saying a lifetime of loving isn’t worth the pain?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But it scares me.”
We said nothing else for a while as Goldie picked her way over the rocky trail. Gravity pulled me forward in the seat, a natural slide closer to John, and then I did the most daring thing imaginable.
I rested my cheek against his back.
My audacity shocked me, but I did not move my head. Just rested my ear against him, and listened to the steady beating of his heart, my fingers still interlaced in front of his ribs.
I held my breath, waiting to see how he would react. I wasn’t the only one full of surprises.
John placed a hand over mine, his calloused thumb rubbed across my knuckles; a comforting touch to be sure, but it also aroused feelings deep inside me. Feelings I’d been struggling to suppress for weeks.
My skin tingled. My heart was a trapped dove inside my chest, fluttering and flapping. Way down low, I felt a feminine stirring. A stirring that I could not name, but it was an overwhelming, primal force, urgent and demanding. I wanted to dance and sing and laugh and cry. I wanted to both praise God and do all manner of sin with this man.
But it was a tenuous thrill and I well and truly knew it. I would be no Ruthie, no matter how much I might want to lie down with John and give my body over to him. And it wasn’t because I was a good girl, although I usually tried hard to be one.
Rather, my restraint arose from the huge class chasm between us. He was a rich man at the top of the heap, the king of the Trans-Pecos, and I was nothing more than a maid at best. At worst, I was simply the pity-case daughter of a man who’d been killed in one of his mines. I understood my place in the world and it was not with a man like John Fant.
The problem was that with John dressed like a cowboy, the lines between us blurred. For a few minutes, it was easy to pretend that he was just a lonesome cowpoke, raised on the land, not so different from me. He even smelled familiar, like Jeff Davis County earth. Home. He smelled like home.
For a dangerous stretch of time, I foolishly let myself dream.
We rode like that for several minutes, not speaking, just being there together in the saddle.
“Millie,” he said after a while.
My eyes were closed and I was concentrating on listening to the beating of his heart and absorbing the heat from his body and marveling how good it felt to be so close to him. I knew this moment couldn’t last and I was milking it for everything it was worth. “Uh-huh.”
“I’ve made a decision.”
“About what?” I murmured.
“The mine.”
“Are you going to close it?”
“I’m going to repair the mine and keep it open.”
“Even though it will cost you more money than you can get back out of it?”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s the right thing to do.”
I squeezed him tight, letting him know how much that meant to me.
He chuckled. “Ease up a bit, I need to breathe.”
Embarrassed, I dropped my arms.
“You can still hang on,” he said. “Don’t want you to fall, Millipede.”
Millipede! He’d given me a nickname.
We were long past the rocky incline, on the flat ground of the valley floor; there was no need for me to keep hanging on tight, but I did it anyway. Sliding my arms around him, feeling his warmth seep through me all over again.
Millipede. He’d called me Millipede.
A grin spread over my face bigger than Texas. This was the most romantic thing that had ever happened to me.
But my grin quickly faded away. This was also the most wretched thing, because even though I could never say the words out loud, I realized something that my heart had known since that day on my daddy’s porch.
John Fant was my one true love and there was no way in the whole wide world that we could ever be together.
A FTER OUR HORSEBACK ride, I didn’t see John again for an entire month. By day, he filled my thoughts. By night, he ransacked my dreams and